I'm not sure. The culture of collaboration and cooperativity is definitely more out in the open at MIT in general. Also, MIT's biology department is smaller, and housed in a few buildings within walking distance of each other -- Harvard's twenty zillion biology labs are spread across many sites distant from one another. </p>
<p>Still, I think competitiveness and secrecy is a function of the PIs and only partly of institutions -- I was warned as an undergrad to avoid saying anything juicy about my lab's research during interviews. My PI at Harvard is ecstatic about collaboration, whether within the lab or with other labs, although we're still warned to keep quiet about gene names until our work is published. (Of course, this is probably a good place to point out that my MIT PI went to Harvard, and my Harvard PI went to MIT. ;))</p>
<p>I don't think, in general, that Harvard is a cutthroat place to be a graduate student. As an institution, though, I like MIT better.</p>
<p>I applied to Yale's Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry track and heard back on January 3rd that I got an interview February 14th-17th. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>KUNRD07, l3monkid, 9bull: Thank you for your input. And I think how l3monkid interpret WU's moves made a lot of sense. I am applying to MCDGB and the last friday I called, shirlene told me that the decisions has (all?) been made. I left my email to her and hopefully she could verify me my status. :)</p>
<p>amc85: there seemed to be none talking about CBB acceptance here as far as I could remember, and the BBS secretory told me that their different tracks make decisions independently, so there's a big chance that CBB committee still haven't released their decisions yet, I guess~. good luck~ By the way, what specific area of computational biology are you generally interested in?</p>
<p>I can totally understand your angxt about Harvard. I know plenty of first and second year grad students at both Stanford and UCSF (though not Harvard), who felt like they wouldn't last their first year. They are some of the most hard working and successful grad students in the program, and are extremely well respected. I'm not telling you that you should or shouldn't interview at Harvard; I guess I would just say that in your interviews, forget about what school it is and concentrate on the individual faculty members and their interests. Just try to find the place where the faculty share your intersts the most and vice versa. Interviews are like trying on a pair of running shoes. If you focus on the brand of the shoe, or the stripes or reputation or whatever, you might not really feel how comfortable the fit is. Best of luck, you have much to be proud of. Think of the interview as a casual chat among friends (who you really respect) about science.</p>
<p>Does anyone know who's the chair of committee of berkeley MCB? or the one who's in charge of the admission in the field of cell, developmental biology. Thanks!</p>
<p>Hey guys, I didn't read the forum for like 3 days and today I sign in and I see this string of very very very insightful thoughts. Just thought would wish everyone goodluck as you wait to hear back and congrats to those who have made it. :)</p>
<p>KUNRD07, thank you for the info. I called yale admission and they said some of the application are still being reviewed..i hope he's not lying ( tho i think he is... :( )</p>
<p>Has anyone applied to University of Massachusetts Medical School? I have an interview on Feb 8. I had applied to:</p>
<p>Umass Med, Yale BBS, WashU, Duke MCB, Johns Hopkins BCMB, University of Cincinnati Cell bio, Umass Amherst, University of Maryland Molecular Medicine, and SDSU.</p>
<p>denny- calling dibs means getting the first chance. Let's say I call dibs on the cake.. that means when we both see the cake, I get the first chance to eat it :)</p>
<p>UMass Medical is the same as UMass Worcester right? I applied but I haven't heard from them. I've heard back from JHU BCMB and am actually going there this weekend.</p>
<p>Is anyone else getting freaked out over upcoming interviews??</p>
<p>yes Umass med is the same as Umass worcester. I find it a bit strange that you got a call from JHU but not Umass med so i guess they are still reviewing your application.</p>
<p>I applied to the MCB track at yale. i think they dont even bother to send rejects since they get so many applicants so my hopes arent to high on yale.</p>
<p>Maybe this will be half relief, half dream shattering: I haven't heard a reply from Yale either, but in mid-December they called me because they were missing a piece of my application - they said the admissions committee was meeting to review apps the following week. So I'm pretty sure they met and pretty sure they didn't invite me. Ehh, I got interviews at plenty of good schools though and so will you, so screw them.</p>