<p>@ mal2v88:</p>
<p>I was at the Yale MB&B interview last week… were you there too? And if so… have you already heard on admission?</p>
<p>@labgod: Thanks for your honest input. This one’s going to be a toughie, although hopefully I’ll have a better idea after this weekend at UCSD…</p>
<p>@GCAAAUAACGCG: Yep, I was there! Maybe we actually met sometime during, lol…I haven’t heard yet from admissions, I was told they have 2 visitors coming this weekend so probably won’t happen til after that.</p>
<p>@ phDhopeful and microphd</p>
<p>I will be interviewing at Mt Sinai in a couple of weeks too. :S
Did you’ll prepare a lot for the interviews? How tough are the interviews? I haven’t got a list of the interviewers as yet… any tips?</p>
<p>@mal2v88</p>
<p>haha, I’m pretty sure I met you (I definitely remember meeting someone from UVA). I guess we’ll just have to wait a few weeks to hear from admissions. Good luck choosing!</p>
<p>Did anyone else go to the Yale MCGD interview weekend? I have a couple friends in the track who’d warned me about students quitting midway through to enter PhD programs elsewhere or just get terminal masters and work because they were so disenchanted by their lab experiences. But I wasn’t mentally prepared for the city itself. It’s one thing to be in a city like New Haven for a masters degree, but a full PhD in the prime of one’s life? A 4-6 year chunk of your early twenties? I’m balking at the thought. I’m surprised they didn’t sell harder at the interview, particularly considering the shocking tragedy on campus earlier in the year, but apparently one student told a horror story about his car being stolen repeatedly in what was supposed to be a “safe” neighborhood. I enjoyed meeting the faculty members and seeing the facilities, but honestly, you guys, I’m finding it hard to consider with alternatives like Harvard BBS, MIT, and Stanford in the mix. It just doesn’t stack up against competition. I’m so glad to have an insider’s perspective from friends to round out the experience from the weekend. If anyone’s struggling with his or her choice, I’d be happy to share more of my anecdotes from friends in the track. It’s important for all of us to find ourselves in the right place next fall after this months-long ordeal of applying. 
Cheers!</p>
<p>Anyone else going to Harvard-BBS recruitment this weekend? I am super excited about it.</p>
<p>I know, right? Honestly, I’m surprised they bother having one. I can’t imagine anyone turning down Harvard-BBS without a serious mental defect impairing his or her judgment.</p>
<p>wow, all i hear are bad things about harvard. i’d turn it down in a sec.</p>
<p>LOL, I would turn down Harvard BBS for places I’m interviewing with. I’d pick Princeton, Chicago, and places that didn’t interview me, like Stanford, MIT, over Harvard.</p>
<p>^^ Guys, may I know why? all the bad things about the program? I am really excited about the program and this comes from someone who already has spent 1.5 years in a lab at Harvard and has Stanford (so far interview) as an option.</p>
<p>To be fair, what I should have said is that Harvard represents the top choice for a considerable portion of people but that many other factors go into personal preferences. Geography, in particular. All I’m saying is that I find it amusing that Harvard is courting students it has already accepted for fear of losing them to MIT/Stanford/fill-in-the-blank-top-5-school. As an applicant I’m grateful for the effort, but I’m sure they’d have no trouble filling their ranks each fall without spending the funds on a weekend in a year when everyone’s endowment has taken a hit. I’m thankful but bemused. And congrats, Safetypin, on Princeton and Chicago! They’re both incredible institutions.</p>
<p>-faculty directly compete with each other as they must distinguish themselves from others in their field in order to get tenure (this was told to me by a professor who got his post-doc there); this discourages collaboration
-one prof told me that it’s a good place to go for post-doc but poor graduate education
-one individual told me that a friend of hers had her experiment destroyed by a fellow lab member out of envy; another about how someone had their data stolen</p>
<p>i dunno. seems cut-throat. too many ridiculously ambitious people butting heads.</p>
<p>I’ve heard a little of that, but I think that particular personalities thrive on that sort of intensity and “gunner” culture. And that isn’t to say that people not of that personality type don’t make outstanding scientists. It’s a balance between competition and collaboration, and different schools seem to be located at very disparate points along that spectrum. </p>
<p>What troubles me more are stories I hear from schools where multiple graduate students are dropping out or transferring schools (read: starting all over elsewhere) for reasons like poor mentorship, bad working relationships even with lab staff, general depression cultivated by the geographical environment, etc. Those were the stories I heard in New Haven, and that’s the type of thing that scares me off.</p>
<p>I have a couple of questions. I visited Yale this past weekend and thought it was much better than expected…I’m surprised to hear so many bad stories about it. Not only that, but I got the clear impression that people in my current lab thought highly of Yale.
Also, I ws really excited about Harvard, until I started hearing “horror stories” about it…the kind ScienceChick is saying about Yale.
And since we’re discussing the happiness of the graduate students, which currently I think is the biggest factor in deciding, can we throw MIT and Stanford into the mix too. I would really appreciate it if everyone could share anything they’ve heard about these programs. Oh, and UCSF- I loved it there…but then again again I loved Yale too, so I’d love to hear what other people have to say.</p>
<p>I’d also like to hear what horror stories people have about Yale, in particular. I visited last weekend and I was pleasantly surprised to find it not ridiculously intense, competitive, or terrifyingly cut throat… but then again recruitment weekends are designed to be overwhelmingly positive. Was I mislead? I heard horror stories from MIT, Harvard, CalTech and a few others that kept me from applying to those places, but I thought I might be safe(ish) in new haven…</p>
<p>
The BBS weekend is identical to every other interview weekend at every other top program, except that students are already accepted. Most top schools will accept a substantial percentage of students they interview, and their interview weekends are primarily for recruitment purposes.</p>
<p>
Everybody outside Harvard will tell stories like this – I heard them over and over when I was at interview weekends myself. Intriguingly, people within Harvard do not observe these things happening. </p>
<p>Listen, there are cutthroat people everywhere. I refuse to accept that they’re concentrated in any particular program, unless that program has a serious cultural problem coming from the top. In my experience, science at Harvard is intense, collaborative, and friendly. I feel my life is shaped significantly more by my lab than by my institution or program, so I strongly advocate picking a program where you will be able to join the lab of a PI who cares about you and who carefully creates a healthy lab society. But that’s not a program-specific choice.</p>
<p>Oh for me it comes down simply to the program’s and research interests of faculty. Chicago and Princeton combine computational and experimental neuroscience, and Harvard Neuro (though I applied to BBS, but it is not fair to compare) doesn’t (at least from my research, in a way that the other two do). That’s it, really.</p>
<p>I like the programs more. I think it is probably more cut-throat but I think that’s true everywhere and I don’t think you can say the whole place is cutthroat or not. It is whether your PI is very competitive or not and it is about how competitive the field is. Some fields are not that competitive (even just looking at IF of top journals in different subfields as a very rough measure). Like really, in my university, some labs, 40 hours a week is normal, others, 60 is an ‘easy’ week. It is all about you and the PI. </p>
<p>I’m not saying Harvard BBS is bad by ANY stretch of the imagination, I did apply! I’m just saying, I think people have very valid reasons to pick Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Princeton, Yale, Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, GSK, etc. over Harvard without losing any prestige.</p>
<p>I think anecdotal stories have their value, but take them all with a grain of salt. Really. It is the lab you pick that matters the most at the end of the day. You can be in the most collaborative place but work with a PI that will refuse to collaborate or is disliked by the entire department, or vise-versa. And your personality matters a LOT. Personally, I wanted a huge and impersonal undergrad where I was left on my own but I want a small, collaborative grad program and a pretty hands-on PI (funny right). If you do well in high-pressure and competitive environments, then what some might think is bad, is actually great for you! I’m looking into switching model organisms for my PhD and I definitely don’t want to be left alone to figure things out.</p>
<p>I think you have to consider everything when you are picking a school. Sure, the program itself might rock or be pretty high up there, but if it’s in some po-dunk town, that’s something you have to consider… I went to summer school at Harvard and it’s a killer place to live. Stunningly beautiful, academics everywhere, best town in the U.S. (except for San Francisco). You are right on the Charles (I used to go running with my girlfriends along the river every day there). Boston is a cultural hub – and an absolute paradise in the summer. </p>
<p>I visited Yale and I liked New Haven a fair amount but between there and Boston? BOSTON. CAMBRIDGE. No question. I’m older and have lived in Boston and Los Angeles (as well as a small city) for many years. It makes a difference. If you’re going to spend 6 years of your life somewhere, you better darn well love it. Yes, the research matters but that is only one piece. </p>
<p>NYU has done it for me. I absolutely loved that program, the city, and the energy of everyone there. From the very beginning, the program director was extraordinarily nice – he waived my fee because I had gotten a summer research grant a couple years ago, answered all of my questions directly, and encouraged me to apply. The people interviewing me were bright and enthusiastic, and even though the interviews were stressful, I felt like I would be challenged there. The vibe of New York is also a very, very big factor. I want to be in a metropolitan environment. I think that’s as much of an education as everything else. I ended up canceling six of the eight interviews I have gotten after the Sackler acceptance (am still going to one at the end of the month although NYU is hands down, my top choice).</p>
<p>These are opportunities of a lifetime - to get what are basically full scholarships to live and get an education in some of the greatest cities in the world. </p>
<p>My thoughts: Harvard. You will be in a terrific program, it will look amazing like Yale and Princeton on your CV, AND you get to live in Cambridge/Boston. That is a HUGE plus. You must live in Boston at least once in your life.</p>
<p>First off, thank you molliebatmit for giving us the scoop as an insider. Sometimes it’s hard to get past reputations and get to the heart of how the students themselves feel about their environments, and isn’t that what matters? I completely agree with you Cal2010, in the respect that this forum is meant to allow us to share our stories so that all of us can make highly informed decisions that will affect our academic careers from this point forward. </p>
<p>I’d make a distinction between the rigors and intensity of an environment like Harvard’s and the stories I mention about Yale. And I’d also say that at the level of top ten, reputation among lab colleagues and faculty members etc is no longer a point of concern; that’s a given already. What will matter is the experience you have on the ground there, because you’ll be there much longer than you were even at college. Those are the things you learn from having friends who are already matriculated graduate students; it’s the perspective that you don’t necessarily see at an interview weekend or in a carefully crafted brochure. </p>
<p>Here’s an example: one recent drop-out from MCGD was the Yale graduate student body president herself, who was a successful student with her own NIH funding as well as someone we can imagine had as active and fulfilling a social life as one can have in New Haven. She quit this year after becoming completely disenchanted with the situation there and accepted a terminal masters, leaving the remaining students in the student government fumbling to replace her. </p>
<p>There’s much to say about New Haven itself. Some graduates will tell you New Haven was great for graduating quickly because there were “no distractions.” In my humble opinion, anyone who’s capable of graduating in 3 years was probably going to manage it anyplace because it speaks more to his/her focus than anything else. The city is small enough not to have anything of entertainment value apart from a few bars, yet large enough for crime to be a serious concern. There’s a reason the school pays to shuttle its students door-to-door, and this wasn’t enough to prevent the serious tragedy that occurred last fall. The town has improved a little due to Yale’s investment in infrastructure, but this is in response to violent incidents. I’d turn your attention here: [Yale</a> University, Murdertown of the Ivies - Yale - Gawker](<a href=“http://gawker.com/5358958/yale-university-murdertown-of-the-ivies]Yale”>http://gawker.com/5358958/yale-university-murdertown-of-the-ivies)</p>
<p>Anyway, I have more to say about the school and others, but it’s getting late and this post is getting long. As for Stanford, my interview isn’t until March. I’ll get back to you!</p>
<p>:) I’d love to hear what you think of Stanford when the time comes, Cal2010 I really respect and value everyone’s input.</p>
<p>Yeah crime is definitely a think to consider and location is important. Partly why I didn’t apply to Johns Hopkins… I don’t know about living in Baltimore. Graduating quickly is good, I guess, but not if you are doing it because you are absolutely miserable and just want to get the degree ASAP. Grad school is grad school, but these are still years of your life and I think it is worthwhile goal, in my opinion, to try to be as happy as you can be no matter what stage of life you are at. </p>
<p>Personally, I know I wouldn’t do good science if I wasn’t happy. I’d avoid and dread the lab and I’d avoid and dread the coursework. No matter HOW boring the town I’m living in is.</p>