username1824

A fellowship I'm on gives me some money every year to buy supplies or whatever you need. I have $400 left to spend by May 15, but I'm not totally sure what I should buy. I'm thinking maybe a textbook, and an external hard drive, but that still leaves me with $150 left over. Any thoughts?

Do you have a link or anything to this program?

I wish I lived on the west coast. I could stay up until midnight, but not 3am. I'll be dead tomorrow by lunch time.

Ugh, I hate this so much

Every grad student you met at Yale was miserable? In MCGD? I'm sorry you got that impression but I'm pretty surprised by it. I'm a first year in Yale's MCGD and I can't think of a single other person there who is miserable. I know people who are shy and quiet and that's the only thing I can think of that might be mistaken for someone being miserable. But you gotta go with your gut, and if you're not happy with Yale, there's nothing you can do.

Well I can give my perspective as a first-year grad student. I just finished hosting for the interview weekends. All of the students, or I should say first-years and second-years, were out on all of the extracurricular activities, and the major reason was because all our friends were gonna be there. I don't know about other programs, but my department has 30+ first years and we're all really close with each other and genuinely enjoy spending time together. So if I hear another school only half the students show up to extracurricular stuff, based solely on my experiences which may or may not be representative (I can only attend one graduate school after all), I would think that the department is not extremely close. This may or may not be true, I really can't say and I think you'd have a better idea based on the interactions you saw. If you're a person like me who enjoys interacting with your peers and fellow students, this may not be the perfect environment for you. Again it's hard to say because I'm basing my answer solely on my experiences. On the matter of high postdoc/grad ratio, I feel that your PhD is all about preparation and training. I rotated in one lab that was all graduate students and the mentor would constantly pop into lab to say hi and see if anyone needed any help or anything. I also rotated in a lab with 30 post docs and 1 graduate student. A week or two ago, I told the PI with the 30+ lab that I wanted to join, so that's where I'm doing my thesis. Originally I went into grad school thinking that PI mentorship was irreplaceable, but I realized in my rotation that postdocs can make excellent mentors too. I should mention that the lab atmosphere in the lab I'm in is extraordinarily generous, full of collaborations between members, and overall very friendly, so I know that if I have questions, there will be a postdoc. Additionally, my PI paired me up with a postdoc who's fairly new also, so that we can each help each other and grow together in our time. I'm positive there are many postdoc heavy labs where the postdocs are very self-driven and are looking to publish and don't want to use their time offering training to a grad student. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that postdoc-heavy labs can be great if the postdocs themselves are generous and friendly. Postdocs can be great allies and mentors in your training. But overall, despite how much I love the lab I'm in, I would not have joined it if I didn't think I can get some kind of mentorship and training from the postdocs. If you don't feel grad-mentoring (either from the PI or postdocs) at this school is up to your expectations, I wouldn't go there. Your mentorship and training are the entire reason you're in grad school.

Well, what if you accept your school that you wanna go to, then you go to the interview, are BLOWN AWAY at the interview, and can't accept their offer. Your offer at the school you wanna go to will still be there after the weekend, so it's safe to wait.

If they rescind their offer for any reason, academic or bureaucratic, they would let you know.

WashU is very well respected in biology. In my (perhaps naive) opinion, I feel that WashU and Columbia are equals in biological research. I don't think you would get a huge advantage from name recognition by going to Columbia

Woah! To accept ZERO grad students for the year! That's really unfortunate for NC State, and I guarantee it's very frustrating and concerning for everyone involved.

If it didn't work with the professor at Northwestern, would there really be no other professors you would be excited about rotating with there?

If you're not checking a bag, most airlines let you print your airline ticket from home, so you can go straight to the security checkpoints when you arrive. Pretty good time saver, and it just makes one less thing to do.

I don't know anyone who gave their interviewers CVs or anything. The person interviewing you has your entire application in front of them usually and the point of the interview is to get to know you beyond your stats and numbers. So I don't know if it would be helpful to bring copies of your CV or anything like that. But that's just my opinion, maybe others strongly disagree

Not necessarily. Usually when they decide on who to offer interviews to, they assign certain professors to contact you. Some professors may contact you that same day, others might way a few days.

Send an email to Iowa asking when they would like your response by. That's what I did to all the early interview requests I got, and every single school was cool with it.