niimits Posted April 1, 2012 Posted April 1, 2012 Accepted to UT Austin Pharmacology and Toxicology department for Neuropharmacology track. - Liked the city, and the faculty were very like-able. - The option to combine pharmacology and neuroscience is very appealing. - Gonna work with an established PoI, that every grad student suggested would be their top pick for a dissertation committee. - Not guaranteed funding, but with my gates millennium scholarship take home stipend should be about 15 k per year. (They said I could get a GRA or other potential grants.) UT Houston GSBS for neuroscience. - Houston seemed very livable and the affiliation with MD Anderson makes for great research opportunities. - I work with Opiates and Drugs of abuse so the potential for translational studies is great. - PoI recently published in Nature Med. and thinks the follow up project would be even higher impact. (But not sure if he has grad students cuz the nature med paper was all post-docs) - Guaranteed 29k per year take home stipend. Medical University of South Carolina for Neuroscience. - Charleston was nice, but having lived in san diego and la, the texas cities felt more my pace and style. - Great program in drugs of abuse, but the scope seems fairly limited to addiction in rodents. (I have already been doing similar research for 4 years now and would like to expand a little more in grad school) - Potential to work with one of the bigger names in drug abuse research. (Talked to him over skype and he said he could make no garauntees that he would be taking students, he only keeps two at a time. Although they would be leaving around the same time i would commit to a lab.) - Guaranteed 23 k stipend with a chance to receive an additional 2 k through a fellowship offered by the school. UT is well UT and my postdoc (whose letter pretty much got me in) went there and highly recommends the school. The PoI is well established and sure to help make great connections for a post doc. The stipend is not great but doable. UTHSC GSBS the affiliation with MD Anderson Cancer Center and the proximity to BCM and Rice makes for countless collaboration opportunities and the stipend is amazing. MUSC gives me the chance to work with one of the more known researchers in drugs of abuse, but no guarantee that I will get into his lab. No idea what to do :/ Any suggestions?????
manchee Posted April 4, 2012 Posted April 4, 2012 Hello, I am really late to this thread, I know nothing about the programs and this may be a little creepy, but I stumbled across this thread when I searched "Austin," and I think I met you at the behavioral neuroscience interview weekend a couple weeks ago! If not, please completely disregard this message, haha.
niimits Posted April 4, 2012 Author Posted April 4, 2012 hey... yeah i might have!! where are you from again?? have you heard back from them yet??? also any suggestions for me??
manchee Posted April 4, 2012 Posted April 4, 2012 I'm from Wake Forest University (but living in Virginia currently). I have heard back, got accepted to Austin, and will be attending in the fall. I know pretty much nothing about pharmacology programs, so my only suggestion would be "go to Austin!" but that's obviously a really biased opinion. I do have a friend at MUSC, but he's there for med school, so I guess that's really no help either. Though, as a city, I much prefer Austin to Charleston.
niimits Posted April 4, 2012 Author Posted April 4, 2012 Oh yeah! Congrats!!!! And the other two programs are actually neuro programs, but yeah trynna make up my mind by the end of this week
risingsun11801 Posted April 4, 2012 Posted April 4, 2012 I also applied to Neuroscience programs, but not any of these ones, so I can only comment on the reasons you listed. No guaranteed funding at UT Austin would be a red flag for me. 15K compared to 29K at Houston?? I have undergrad student loan debt and would not want to scrape by for 5 years or have to take out more loans. Another thing that I noticed was you only mentioned one POI at each school- don't these schools have rotations? Ideally there would be at least 3 POIs at each school that seem interesting enough to work with. The mentoring ability of an advisor is far more important than their research area when it comes to grad school. Furthermore, some PIs might be good postdoc mentors but not student mentors. (My current lab does pretty well with grad students but postdocs end up foundering.) I would suggest UT Houston because I know it's a nice city, there is a ton of research being conducted in the medical complex and opportunities to meet all kinds of people (there are more likely regional meetings for networking compared to SC), the stipend is generous. But, I would make sure there are multiple labs taking students that you would be interested in joining there. niimits 1
niimits Posted April 5, 2012 Author Posted April 5, 2012 I also applied to Neuroscience programs, but not any of these ones, so I can only comment on the reasons you listed. No guaranteed funding at UT Austin would be a red flag for me. 15K compared to 29K at Houston?? I have undergrad student loan debt and would not want to scrape by for 5 years or have to take out more loans. Another thing that I noticed was you only mentioned one POI at each school- don't these schools have rotations? Ideally there would be at least 3 POIs at each school that seem interesting enough to work with. The mentoring ability of an advisor is far more important than their research area when it comes to grad school. Furthermore, some PIs might be good postdoc mentors but not student mentors. (My current lab does pretty well with grad students but postdocs end up foundering.) I would suggest UT Houston because I know it's a nice city, there is a ton of research being conducted in the medical complex and opportunities to meet all kinds of people (there are more likely regional meetings for networking compared to SC), the stipend is generous. But, I would make sure there are multiple labs taking students that you would be interested in joining there. Thank you for your help!!! Just got the financial information from Austin, they are actually gonna give me a GRA at 24k plus an extra 1k (or a new laptop) for the first semester, so it seems like the money wouldn't be so much of an issue with Austin either. My postdoc recommended picking Austin because (she is from there and) she knows that the advisor is good with grad students. And the reason I only mentioned one PoI per school was cuz I was just talking about the person I would most like to work with. Obviously that could change with rotations, each school does have other PIs that I am interested in.
SlickMcFavorite Posted April 8, 2012 Posted April 8, 2012 With what you've told us so far (and especially with the new funding info) it seems like you like Austin the best -- go for it!
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