<p>Thanks, Mollie!! :)</p>
<p>Sorry, forgot to ask... where did you apply Rik112?</p>
<p>Hi crepusculo,</p>
<p>I applied to several places. MIT (BE and Biology), Harvard DEAS, JHU, Berkeley/UCSF, Stanford, Caltech, Columbia, Upenn and Rockefeller (Mathematical Biology). </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Hi Mollie,</p>
<p>I am sorry for the trouble but I was wondering if maybe you can fill me up a bit with your experience interviewing last year for the bio department at MIT. I will be interviewing in a couple of weeks and Im a bit worried because I do not have a background in biology.
your comments and advice will be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Take care!</p>
<p>Sounds good. Best of luck rik112!</p>
<p>To be honest, there's not much of a difference between interviewing at any of the top bio schools. Professors are not going to quiz you during the interview, and you need to be able to talk about your prior research experience and your future goals in an intelligent manner. I think I had four or five interviews during the MIT weekend.</p>
<p>Is there anything specific you'd like to know? My post on the first page of this thread describes the interview weekend activities that go on at MIT's weekends.</p>
<p>Hey Mollie,</p>
<p>thx for all the insights of MIT interview. just a quick question, what is the chance that they will arrange interviews with folks of your choice. and if it is not very high, r they going to randomly select people? i really don't want to sit through an interview with people talk about the research i have 0 interest. and r u gonna host this year?</p>
<p>best,
ECB</p>
<p>I went to MIT for undergrad. :) I'm a grad student in the Harvard BBS program. And at this point, I don't think I'm going to host for our recruitment weekend -- my fiance and I live in a very small studio apartment and we don't have room.</p>
<p>When you reply to MIT telling them which weekend you'd like to attend (perhaps they haven't sent this information yet?), you will give them a list of professors whose research piques your interest, as well as a few general fields you might like. They'll match you up with people you're interested in to the best of their ability -- of course, sometimes too many people will ask to speak with one professor, or a certain professor will be out of town for the weekend. But they will try to match you with the people you request.</p>
<p>So is it correct to say that the only real "evaluation" (i.e. anxiety-inducing) part of the interview day is when we have one-on-one meetings with the faculty? To clarify, is there anyone evaluating us during the rest of the day, e.g., grad students who check to see if we somehow are a "good fit" during the social events or if we participate actively during presentations/poster sessions, etc.? (i.e. Who can we actually trust?? hehe half-joking here)</p>
<p>Also, in general are the professors who interview us familiar with our application? Do they look at it in advance? Or do they pretty much just have a copy of our application/SOP/resume in front of them and then just ask us some questions as they look over it? </p>
<p>Are their questions very specific (like "Why didn't you try using Method X instead of Method Y in your experiment?") or are they more general (like "So I see you did research in such-and-such. What exactly did you do?"). And are any of their questions quiz-style or creativity/intuition-demanding? e.g., "We use Method X a lot. Can you explain the background theory behind it?" or "I'm currently working on Process X. Can you think of three factors that might govern this process? How might you make the process more robust?" I would think that these last sorts of question would be particularly evil. God forbid they ask any of those notorious interview questions like "Estimate the number of pinheads that can fit inside a 747."</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any info!</p>
<p>No one is evaluating you but the professors, and only during interviews. The rest of the time, everybody will just be wandering around and happily socializing -- the major purpose of the weekend is recruitment, anyway, and the actual evaluation is a somewhat small part, at least in emphasis.</p>
<p>Faculty members are given access to your entire application in advance. I did have a few interviews (although not at MIT) where the professors admitted they hadn't looked at my application, and that I'd need to tell them everything; generally, though, they will look through your application and will be familiar with it.</p>
<p>I was never asked any tricky questions in any interview at any school. I had a few questions like, "Why didn't you try this technique in your experiments?", but that's just because professors get interested in your work and want to know more about it. I don't think I was ever asked a question in an interview that had a right and wrong answer -- everything was open-ended. When an interview goes well, it's more like a conversation than a question-answer session: you talk about your research, then the faculty member talks about his or her research.</p>
<p>Hi do you know anything about Brown's Biomed Program? Is is good etc.?</p>
<p>Cool... thanks, Mollie!</p>
<p>my bad, mollie. how is harvard BBS. i heard it a little cutthroat and competitive. thanks for the info.</p>
<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>Mollie thank you so much for you advice. I have a few questions I would like to ask you but I first need to organize my scattered mind. anyway, thank you so much for all your input!</p>
<p>hey crepusculo, did you hear from berkeley? I just got an email from them. Good luck!!</p>
<p>take care guys!</p>
<p>
[quote]
how is harvard BBS. i heard it a little cutthroat and competitive.
[/quote]
Yeah, it's weird -- that's what everybody says. I mean, when I told professors at other schools that I was considering BBS, they all gave me the "Harvard is really competitive and nobody collaborates" speech. </p>
<p>I haven't seen that at all -- I mean, I don't think the professors here are different from professors any other place. One of the cool things about BBS is that there are very few graduate students compared to the number of faculty members, so it's generally very easy to get into a rotation lab or a thesis lab; actually, the faculty members get really excited when you contact them about it. It's a grad student's market. ;)</p>
<p>One thing about BBS is that people are spread through labs all through Boston -- most of the labs are in several different buildings and hospitals in the Longwood Medical Area, but many labs are in Mass General Hospital (which is all the way across the city). First-years in my program bond through first-year courses, as most people take the same classes first semester, but when we pick thesis labs, we will be scattered across the city. That's kind of a pain.</p>
<p>So I certainly haven't seen any cutthroat behavior in the program, either in class or in rotation labs. It's competitive in the labs, of course, but that's not really a "Harvard" thing so much as it is a "high-powered lab in biology" thing. I mean, in your upper years in BBS, you're going to spend a zillion hours a week in lab, and your advisor will probably expect that behavior. But that's true of every biology program, and particularly of every biology program that has a high percentage of PIs who are at the forefront of their fields.</p>
<p>I guess that I personally don't feel like there were huge cultural differences between any of the schools at which I interviewed last year (UCLA, UCSF, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Harvard). I ended up basing my decision on location, coordinating grad school offers with my fiance, the number of faculty members doing work I liked, and stipend amount. (Okay, not really that last one.) Differences in program culture or coursework didn't factor into my decision whatsoever.</p>
<p>Hey Rik112, yep I got an e-mail from Berkeley today. Congrats to both of us hehe. Kinda sucks it's on a Mon-Tues though. Looks I'll be missing some school...</p>
<p>Last year there were a few kids who interviewed at UCSF on Fri-Sat-Sun, Berkeley on Sun-Mon-Tue, and Stanford on Thu-Fri-Sat. Haha, they were pretty tired of giving their research spiels after Stanford. :)</p>
<p>Wow, I can only imagine hehe</p>
<p>mollie, yeah i think it may vary from labs to labs. I think most labs at berkeley were pretty chill, but there are a few infamous slavedrivers. but i kept hearing this west coast vs east coast thing. i guess i have to check it out when i interview there. btw, its another rumor i heard about harvard in general. harvard assistant prof.'s are hard to get tenure unless you are top genius like david liu, so it takes extra precaution to choose labs. i don't if that is true...</p>
<p>rik, crep. congrats on berkeley. did u apply to mcb? if so, did jamie cate contact you? i also heard some rumors about that too. :)</p>
<p>and yeah berkeley, stanford and ucsf has this interview week thing. i kind like it (although i didnt apply to neither stanford and ucsf, and berkeley for obvious reason) i wish MIT and harvard can do the similar thing... i'm dreaded about flying over to boston twice... 5 cross continental trips gonna suck</p>
<p>Hi Mollie</p>
<p>Do you know anything about Brown's Biomed program>? How good is it?</p>
<p>Harvard and MIT should be the same weekend -- are they not this year? Harvard's is the first part of the weekend and MIT's is the second part. This should at least be true for the mid-March weekend (which I think is Harvard's second and MIT's third).</p>
<p>I've heard that it's not as ridiculous to get tenure as a Harvard biologist as it used to be. It's still something worth asking any professor you're considering rotating with (not during recruitment, though!) -- the two profs with whom I've rotated so far have come out and told me they have tenure within the first five minutes of our first meetings.</p>
<p>ChemE, I don't know anything about Brown's biomed program, sorry.</p>