<p>Anyone know why the invite from MIT Biology calls it an “Open House Weekend”? And why interviews are only scheduled for 1 out of the 3 days? Is this more of a recruitment weekend?</p>
<p>(Don’t get too excited guys, I’m asking for a friend 
)</p>
<p>Squarci, interview weekends for graduate biology programs are very much recruitment weekends - after all, they are flying you out and wining and dining you! The schedule is usually one day with faculty/student interviews and the other days for faculty talks, tours, dinners, exploring the city, fun activities, mixers etc. So they’re not just evaluating you in person; they’re trying to sell the school to you at the same time.</p>
<p>MolSysBio: I doubt there’s anything wrong with your application. For whatever reason, this year seems to be brutal in the biomedical sciences; it may correspond to the population bubble that broke all records in undergraduate college admissions four years ago and which has continued. That year, probably the year you applied to college, students who would have been shoo-ins at elite colleges five years before were rejected or waitlisted them. The same seems to be true this year for PhD programs in popular science majors. When it is this competitive, sometimes all it takes is a spontaneous decision by the adcom to admit one qualified student over an equally qualified one. (My D discovered yesterday that the online application program at one of her top choices trashed her transcript, and by the time they notified her about it, they had already sent out interview invitations for the program. Because this is a common application program, it may have occurred at a majority of her schools – an example of how some things are beyond your control.) You should NOT believe that there is something wrong with your work or your application. When it comes to highly qualified candidates competing for only a few spots, it becomes a matter of extremely fine points.</p>
<p>Hang in there. You may yet get your interviews, and when you do, you may find that those programs were better fits than you had imagined.</p>
<p>^ Yeah, you can be be 35th on that list of 400, but they still call the first 30. The competition is like med school, for neuro… ugh.</p>
<p>Wow, those are some bleak statistics… Congrats to the Stanford neuro people!</p>
<p>Did anyone here apply to Tufts Sackler Immunology program?
If so have you heard about interviews yet</p>
<p>Do any of you know what’s going on at UC Davis? I can’t find anything about interview dates, and no one seems to have heard from them. I sort of feel like it’s the black hole for applications. Submit and then…??</p>
<p>This thread is making me so glad that I’m not going into neuroscience. Good luck to all of you - the competition seems brutal.</p>
<p>For Yale BBS,
Only 8 international students are invited for interview (feel lucky to be one of them 
). And for MIT, I dont see any internationals getting the invite :(.</p>
<p>Given the sheer number of neuroscience applicants, it seems easier to gain entry into these top universities via undergraduate admissions than via graduate in neuroscience – and that says a heckuva lot.</p>
<p>i guess this means the yale mcgd committee is done sending out invitations? damn…it sucks to be international…</p>
<p>Does MIT have second round for internationals ?</p>
<p>
Numbers-wise, definitely. But at the graduate level, a much higher percentage of applicants are not qualified for admission in the first place.</p>
<p>@molbio I did hear from UC Davis neuro, yesterday morning. The neuro dates are Feb 23-24. Best of luck all!</p>
<p>Just got a University of Texas at Austin (neuroscience) interview via phone (she will follow up with email…)</p>
<p>I think the number of neuro applicants has more to do with the huge amount of undergrads that feed into it. Math, cell and molecular biology, biology, psychology, and neuro undergrads are all vying for positions (to name a few). That’s one hell of a herd to sift through. </p>
<p>Advances in brain research have impacted the shift in interest as well, providing many new research possibilities therein. </p>
<p>Thankfully I got an engagement ring for Christmas, and I have a wedding to plan. It’s the ideal distraction from stressing out about grad school applications to over-applied to, and highly limited in space neuroscience PhD programs!</p>
<p>sigh.</p>
<p>Congrats Neurohopes, Austin rules!</p>
<p>Thanks, brains! Congrats on your engagement! You will get interviews soon too!</p>
<p>congrats brains! I think we can all agree that hearing your good news brings us all back down to earth in realizing that as far as the important things in life goes, an admission to a particular program at a particular school is just not that big of a deal.</p>
<p>actually, it seems that on gradcafe there is an international with US degree who got an invite from MIT Biology. hopefully MIT isn’t done with sending invites yet! :S</p>
<p>assuming that internationals, who have earned their bachelor’s in the u.s., are reviewed like true internationals, gradcafe has one interview invitee to the mit biology program. i really hope they’re not done but all signs are pointing the other way…</p>