Neuroscience applicants for Fall 2013

[ak1921]

@tifoz, thanks for your message Actually I shouldn't be asking that question because I haven't posted any of my decisions yet. (which is kind of embarrassing...my bad) Guess this is what most MIT people are doing.

[ryancho]

For those who applied to Caltech CNS (is there anyone besides me?), I have a news from a current grad student who is a close friend of mine.

 

They are sending invites in the second week of January, and have a single interview weekend: Feb 1st-2nd. 

[Crowson]

Hey Everyone,

I applied to 19 schools and I've heard back from 5 of them so far. I guess Harvard notifies applicants by snail mail, do any other schools do that?

 

I've been invited to interview at Brown, Emory, Duke, WUSTL, and UPenn. I am stoked because those were some of my top choices I am still anxious to hear from Stanford, Harvard and Yale has anybody heard from any of those schools yet?

 

good look everyone and happy new year!

[ryancho]

On 1/1/2013 at 6:41 PM, Crowson said:

Hey Everyone,

I applied to 19 schools and I've heard back from 5 of them so far. I guess Harvard notifies applicants by snail mail, do any other schools do that?

 

I've been invited to interview at Brown, Emory, Duke, WUSTL, and UPenn. I am stoked because those were some of my top choices I am still anxious to hear from Stanford, Harvard and Yale has anybody heard from any of those schools yet?

 

good look everyone and happy new year!

 

@Crowson, welcome and congrats on your acheivement, those are impressive lists. 

 

I talked (over email) with the program coordinator from Harvard, and she said all the invitations has sent out. As far as I know and read from this post, Stanford and Yale has not started send invites yet.

[nibblingsushi]

@Crowson, welcome and congrats on your acheivement, those are impressive lists. 

 

I talked (over email) with the program coordinator from Harvard, and she said all the invitations has sent out. As far as I know and read from this post, Stanford and Yale has not started send invites yet.

 

Stanford traditionally doesn't get back to you till early-mid January. 

[DingBo]

My research interests are more likely in the systems or behavioral neuroscience and my first choice in the applications were within these tracks. ( is this what you asked for??did I get you right?) So far I got interview offers from Columbia, Berkeley, and MIT. But a Question to you. Does this kind of choice really matter? I mean, is your specialization one of the critical factors that schools look upon during the process? Thought these things were some extra info.

I'm not sure if an applicant's selection of track has a critical effect on the admission process, but I would suspect that it does hold some weight. I think this probably is more significant when looking at computational tracks vs the others (systems, cell mol, behavioral etc.) as computational likely attracts the most non-traditional candidates and would have slightly different expectations in terms of prior preparation. So my reasoning for inquiring into the tracks of those who had heard back from schools was to see if decisions were being sent out as a singular group (and those of us who haven't heard back should get comfortable with the idea that we had not been selected) or that some tracks operate more or less independently and correspondingly had not sent out their interview decisions yet. I imagine that this varies significantly institution to institution but I would not be surprised if this were the case, especially for places like Princeton which have a dedicated quantitative track or places like Berekley which have the semi-autonomous redwood center for theoretical neuroscience.

[ak1921]

@DingBo, Thanks for the message. I agree with your idea and based on what I heard from the posts here, this seems to be especially true for MIT. They seem to send out the interview offers over several months, but those offers are sent in several groups, not one by one. I guess MIT is sending out the offers according to the tracks you applied to as a first choice. But still I don't see the point in grouping them into tracks because MIT has only one interview date after all.

[ak1921]

@Crowson, According to my friend, who actaully called all the schools she applied and asked about the send-out dates for the interview, Stanford Bioscience will start sending out the interview offers during the second week of January. I am not that brave to call the office, but good to have a friend who always shares a useful news with you. Only several days left for another round of decisions

[DingBo]

Is anyone else specifically applying to computational tracks? If so, which schools have you heard back from? So far total silence for me.

[brainmaze]

Hey everyone,

 

Bit late to join in the discussion!

 

I'm an international student, doing my undergrad in India. I've applied to about 10 Neuroscience Programs, but so far have only got an interview with WashU.

 

I was just wondering whether it's normal for international students to hear from schools a bit later? Seeing all these results has made me really nervous, and I've almost lost all hope now.

 

Anyway, congrats for all the amazing interview offers!

 

 

[epsilon]

@dingbo, I am interested in computational neuro. I have heard back from Columbia, Duke and Vanderbilt, although on most of my apps I am not sure if there was a place to specify my interest in computational neuro. It was what I talked about in my sop and what not though. What specific computational tracks did u apply to

[ryancho]

Hey everyone,

 

Bit late to join in the discussion!

 

I'm an international student, doing my undergrad in India. I've applied to about 10 Neuroscience Programs, but so far have only got an interview with WashU.

 

I was just wondering whether it's normal for international students to hear from schools a bit later? Seeing all these results has made me really nervous, and I've almost lost all hope now.

 

Anyway, congrats for all the amazing interview offers!

 

Hey, welcome and congrats on WashU. When's your interview session? I am Feb 14-16th, we may meet each other there.

 

I am also an international student (from South Korea, but did undergrad in the States), and I am very curious about those issues you raised. But I also have no idea. But I cannot imagine the admission committees put international students on priority over domestic applicants. 

[brainmaze]

Hey, welcome and congrats on WashU. When's your interview session? I am Feb 14-16th, we may meet each other there.

 

I am also an international student (from South Korea, but did undergrad in the States), and I am very curious about those issues you raised. But I also have no idea. But I cannot imagine the admission committees put international students on priority over domestic applicants. 

 

Hey,

 

Thanks! No, sadly, I'll be interviewing on the Jan 17-18th session, so we won't be able to meet up.  

 

I guess it helps, having done your undergrad in the US, but yeah I agree it's really different from domestic applicants. Guess we'll just have to be patient! WashU was the only school that I applied to which had a separate deadline for international students, so I don't really know how it works for the others. I've stopped expecting a lot though. :-/

 

Any idea about WashU interview acceptance rates?

[ryancho]

Hey,

 

Thanks! No, sadly, I'll be interviewing on the Jan 17-18th session, so we won't be able to meet up.

 

I guess it helps, having done your undergrad in the US, but yeah I agree it's really different from domestic applicants. Guess we'll just have to be patient! WashU was the only school that I applied to which had a separate deadline for international students, so I don't really know how it works for the others. I've stopped expecting a lot though. :-/

 

Any idea about WashU interview acceptance rates?

 

I just asked Sally about that. They are interviewing 45-50 applicants (the range means they are still accepting?????) and will accept 27-30 students. These numbers can vary. They expect 40~50% of registration rate among those accepted applicants. 

[mccamel]

Is anyone else specifically applying to computational tracks? If so, which schools have you heard back from? So far total silence for me.

I applied to computational tracks.  You can see in my sig where I've heard from.

[tifoz]

So who thinks Yale Neuro will be in the next two days and MIT Bio on Friday? Past history would make it seem like that is a possibility.

[leealex0201]

Hi all! I am an international student and did undergrad and master in the state. About my speciality and as you all know well, I applied to computational neuroscience track and I have not heard yet from any of schools that i have applied to.

Based on the info you guys have produced so far, computational people are not getting as many invitations as other track people are getting? If so, I am having two big problems over here.. But i will not loose the hope!

[gliaguy]

So who thinks Yale Neuro will be in the next two days and MIT Bio on Friday? Past history would make it seem like that is a possibility.

 

Hey, I received an invite from Yale a few hours ago.

[gliaguy]

Update: received an invitation from MIT BCS over the weekend. Has anyone else heard back from them yet? I'm not sure if they're done sending out invitations. 

 

So did I.

[Neuron17]

@gliaguy- did you receive the Yale invite by phone or email? thanks!

[ak1921]

I also got an invitation from Yale.

It was by phone from a professor, who actually told me all the official information about the interview. I asked him whether I will get an offcial invitation by email but he was not sure about it. So maybe this is how Yale invites people.

He told me admissions committee had a meeting today and selected about 20 students to invite for the interview. As far as he knows, there are only 3 international students who will be flying from outside of US. The interview dates are Feb 22-23.

Edited January 3, 2013 by ak1921

[tifoz]

@Gliaguy - Are you, like AK1921, currently outside the US? Just curious if the first reported invites were international calls (ak1921 - please correct me, but my memory has you currently doing a masters in Korea).

Everyone, be sure your phones are charged.

[gliaguy]

@gliaguy- did you receive the Yale invite by phone or email? thanks!

It was by phone from a Professor.

 

@Gliaguy - Are you, like AK1921, currently outside the US? Just curious if the first reported invites were international calls (ak1921 - please correct me, but my memory has you currently doing a masters in Korea).

Everyone, be sure your phones are charged.

No, I'm in the US.

[ak1921]

@Gliaguy - Are you, like AK1921, currently outside the US? Just curious if the first reported invites were international calls (ak1921 - please correct me, but my memory has you currently doing a masters in Korea).

Everyone, be sure your phones are charged.

You are totally right on that

[tifoz]

@gliaguy - thanks for the update. So much for my theory. It just surprised me that they are making invite calls at night.