<p>so im applying to both harvard and mit in bioscience. and all potential mentors participate in HST as well. while i heard before that applying to multiple programs at one school is nothing to be afraid (that it will only increase my chance but never decrease. so that as long as i have money, i shall apply), im not sure if there's any point. is HST notoriously difficult to get in?? is it perhaps more competitive than harvard/mit bio?</p>
<p>i dont need more crap shots but would still like to have the maximum possibility. thanks for your 2 cents</p>
<p>HST is, I think, considerably smaller than some of the other biological sciences programs at MIT and Harvard. But I don't know how many people apply every year.</p>
<p>There are many programs within HST. Here are the acceptance rates for the programs that offer doctorates, from Peterson's:</p>
<p>Medical Engineering & Medical Physics - 8%
Speech & Hearing Bioscience & Technology - 32%
Program in Medical Sciences (MD, not PhD) - 6%</p>
<p>To compare, the acceptance rate for MIT Biology is 16%, and for Harvard BBS it is 25%. If the program you want at Harvard is Molecular and Cellular Bio, that is 16%.</p>
<p>Some people ‘in the know’ apply to SHBT (Speech & Hearing Bioscience & Technology) instead as that program receives far fewer applicants (since the program is kind of unknown to many prospective students) and hence has a far higher acceptance rate (32%, according to Peterson’s). SHBT students get basically the same opportunities MEMP students get; the only distinction is that MEMP students get to choose the wording of their degree. MEMP students can choose to receive a doctorate in ‘medical engineering’ or ‘health sciences & technology’ (the degrees are equivalent, and most MEMP students select the more appealing ‘medical engineering’ wording); SHBT students can only receive a doctorate in ‘health sciences & technology’.</p>
<p>I don’t know the situation at Harvard or MIT specifically but I can tell you that at many universities applying to multiple departments is very very negative. At the University of Colorado, if you pulled this, you would immediately be removed from consideration. If you are hoping to get your application in front of multiple admission committees at the same university, you are either pulling a fast one or being fraudulent about your interests.</p>
<p>I second this. Most universities either require or strongly recommend that prospective students only apply to one department in a given application cycle. Some schools do allow you to (optionally) specify an ‘alternate’ department or program that you would like to be considered for if you are not offered admission by the primary department/program you are applying for. Some programs may allow you to apply to multiple ‘tracks’ within the program if some of the ‘tracks’ have some degree of overlap. Overall, though, these are the exception rather than the rule. So unless explicitly told that you can apply to multiple programs, it’s probably best to limit your applications to one program per school.</p>
<p>At Harvard in particular, though, it’s not a problem – they have the HILS program set up in part to facilitate multiple applications within Harvard. There are a lot of biosciences programs at Harvard, and while many of them have overlapping faculty, the programs themselves are focused slightly differently, so a student could legitimately be interested in more than one.</p>
<p>Harvard is also not terribly integrated across school boundaries, and I think the programs themselves would not be pleased if students could apply only to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or only to the medical school programs.</p>