Q&A for Bio PhD Interviews

Graduate School
1

<p>Hi, I'm getting ready for grad school interviews this winter break, and I was hoping to start a thread where current grad students, or anyone who has been through the interview process, could offer some insight into the process.</p>

<p>What is the best attire?</p>

<p>Do "nightmare" scenarios actually occur? (performing lab work, outlining future research, thinking about hypothetical scenarios)</p>

<p>Are the grad students at the interviews involved in the admission/rejection decision process?</p>

<p>Can someone post a short but useful account of an interview weekend?</p>

<p>I'm sure the process differs for each school and each professor, but there must be some commonalities.</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Yay good thread :)</p>

<p>I’m pretty unsure about what to wear. Most (or all) of my interviews are going to be on the east coast and it’ll probably be way too cold to wear a skirt. Should I buy these? [STUDIO</a> STRETCH COLUMNIST PANT at Express](<a href=“http://www.express.com/studio-stretch-columnist-pant-38193-704/refine/Leg+Shape/Barely-Boot/size/10-Long/control/page/2/show/3/index.pro?relatedItem=true&showBreadcrumb=false]STUDIO”>http://www.express.com/studio-stretch-columnist-pant-38193-704/refine/Leg+Shape/Barely-Boot/size/10-Long/control/page/2/show/3/index.pro?relatedItem=true&showBreadcrumb=false)</p>

<p>And what kind of shoes? I have leather boots and nice black heels (~3 inches). Guessing neither is appropriate. So… flats? Should I buy some sort of blazer?</p>

3

<p>@flutterfly_28
Those look sharp. If I were a girl, I’d wear em. </p>

<p>@FiveBoro
Good topic. I am planning on being prepared for anything I could think they would reasonably ask, but getting an idea from people who have done it before would definitely be a huge help.</p>

4

<p>Haha yeah the pants look great on the model. The styling with the belt and heels is probably too fashionista for a graduate school interview though. I would love to wear it that way though! Would that be acceptable for east coast interviews? I only really know California casual lol.</p>

5

<p>

There is not a single best attire. Generally speaking, you should dress business casual, in a way that makes you feel confident and professional, but remembering that you will be doing a lot of walking. What would you wear if you needed to present a poster at a conference, or give a talk to your department? Wear that.</p>

<p>For the most part, professors will probably not be paying attention to what you’re wearing. A nice pair of pants will be fine. (For the record, I wore a skirt for all of my east coast interviews, and didn’t die. But a skirt is the only thing that I wear when I dress up, so YMMV.)</p>

<p>

Performing lab work, no. Interviews will almost always take place entirely in a professor’s office. But you could certainly be asked to outline a research project you’d like to take on, although that wouldn’t be a typical question.</p>

<p>Generally, you’ll just talk about your previous research experience, and the PI will talk about his/her research program, and you’ll have a chance to ask questions about his/her work or about the program. </p>

<p>

For some programs, yes. Acting like a jerk to the current students, or getting totally wasted at a student party, is not advised.</p>

<p>

The first day, people will arrive at different times and end up somewhere at the hotel or on campus. The first night is often a student-hosted dinner – maybe your student host will take you out, or maybe you and a group of prospective students will go out with a few current students. You’ll get some sort of schedule (or at least directions for the next morning.)</p>

<p>The second day, you will probably meet on campus and have breakfast with other recruits. You’ll hear some combination of student and faculty research talks and hear about logistics within the program. Some portion of the day will be blocked off for interviews. You’ll probably go to dinner with faculty members and current students, and there might be a student-hosted party afterward.</p>

<p>The third day, you’ll probably have more interviews. There might be student-led trips to introduce you to the surrounding town/city. And then you go home!</p>

6

<p>How many other prospective students are there for interviews?</p>

7

<p>molliebatmit gave a good summary, so I won’t repeat.</p>

<p>For attire, aim to be in the middle of the pack in terms of dress. Don’t be the person in khakis, but don’t come in a suit and tie or prom dress. Sorry, I’m a guy, and don’t know what women wear. Black pants always seem to be the fallback, and work well.</p>

<p>If I may add my experiences, I’d say to be prepared. Attempt to ask questions during interviews, or at least pretend like your paying attention and understand what’s going on. I say this because it’s hard to know everything before you’ve even started grad school. Hell, I don’t know everything and I’m already in grad school.</p>

<p>Also, I had a professor ask me what experiments I would set up to test my hypothesis for the question he posed. It wasn’t meant to be hard, but he just wanted to see my thought process and how I would respond under pressure. Sounds frightening, but this is what your prelims will be like, so might as well start now.</p>

<p>So, don’t freak out. The first interview is always the hardest, and they get easier once you go through a couple.</p>

<p>Last thing. The number of people varies with how the interview weekend is structured. At most of mine, they grouped the whole department of Biomedical Sciences together, so it was about fifty or so. At Penn, it was just the Immunology program, which was about twenty five.</p>

<p>I personally preferred the smaller group just because it was easier to understand what your peers/faculty were interested in since we were all immunologists. It’s weird to get a structural biologist and not understand their research. That’s just plain awkward.</p>

8

<p>Is it okay to wear a tie for business casual or casual? I’m not planning on buying a suit, but I would feel weird not wearing a tie to an interview…</p>

9

<p>Most of interview is going to be them talking 95% of the time about the research, but besides that, these were what they ask:

  1. what was your previous research exp
  2. what interest you to their research
  3. out of my 7 interviews there was only 1 that ask “are you familiar with this [method that they used in their research]? Can u describe it?” I read their methods so I was able to kind of explain it.</p>

<p>So,

  1. Read recent papers published by each prof you are going to interview with (so you can answer #2 and #3)
  2. If you have previous research exp, you need to make sure you can explain them perfectly (techniques etc) (answer #1)</p>

<p>And attire: business casual, if you are female do NOT wear high heels
It’s this: [I&lt;/a&gt; like the TOP LEFT for male and 2ND TOP LEFT for female one the most](<a href=“http://washingtonprogram.ucdavis.edu/images/business_casualnew%20All.jpg]I”>http://washingtonprogram.ucdavis.edu/images/business_casualnew%20All.jpg)</p>

10

<p>I am planning to look like this during any event affiliated with the faculty or the school (e.g. faculty interviews, poster presentations, faculty dinners)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.businesscasualattire.org/images/business-casual-attire.jpg[/url]”>http://www.businesscasualattire.org/images/business-casual-attire.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>For more casual activities with grad students in more social environments, I’ll probably wear jeans instead of dress pants. I’ll probably still wear a button-up though.</p>

11

<p>Some people had ties. I did not. </p>

<p>They won’t judge for not wearing a tie.</p>

12

<p>Do not go out and buy clothes for the sake of interviews. Your attire is just not going to matter that much. Yes, it would be prudent not to show up in a t-shirt and tattered jeans, but as most interview weekends will state that you are welcome to dress casual, even that would technically be permissible.</p>

<p>I wore a nice sweater and a pair of slacks to all my interviews. And sneakers.</p>

<p>In the end, dress however you feel most comfortably. If the whole “business formal” get-up is what makes you comfortable, then by all means choose that. Just remember none of this is by any means necessary.</p>

<p>

In my program, we get asked for feedback on all the interviewees we interact with, and these have certainly influenced certain students’ admissions decisions.</p>

13

<p>In terms of clothes- you don’t want to be in jeans, and you don’t want to be in a suit. Anywhere in the middle of that is fine. You probably don’t want to wear heels either (or at least ones over ~1inch). There’s probably going to be lots of walking. I generally wore slacks and a sweater and cute flats, except for at my boston interviews where I wore boots since there was snow on the ground. </p>

<p>For the interviews, pay attention, but don’t stress out too much. Some of your interviews will go badly-- but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get in. Be yourself. Most of the professors are there to try to get you to join their labs- not to judge you harshly. </p>

<p>At my program, there isn’t any formal feedback from the grad students re the interviewees- but there have been cases where treating the grad students badly has led to people not getting accepted. I’m not sure that any feedback we could give would get someone accepted. Also, don’t do anything stupid- even if it doesn’t affect whether you will get in or not- if you go to the school then you will have to live with it. Gossip travels fast, and professors know a surprising amount about what happens during the parties at recruitment. </p>

<p>Don’t get totally trashed (even if the grad students are- they are already in the program!). </p>

<p>Don’t sleep with a grad student</p>

<p>Be nice to your student host</p>

14

<p>is a beard / facial hair in general ok? ranging from thin and neatly shaven to full blown crazy scientist beard…</p>

15

<p>Has anyone been already through an interview for graduate admissions? I have no clue what to expect from that situation!</p>

16

<p>I’ve read every recent publication of every possible faculty that I could interview with. I then made a cliff notes about each professor, their research and their possible direction of future research (based on the department/individual website). I’ve also prepared for the typical interview questions that I expect to receive such as “Why do you want to do research here?”, “What motivated you?”, “Tell me about your past research experience.” etc…</p>

<p>The toughest thing I have answering is answering the “Tell me about your past research experience”. I haven’t had any publications but I have about 2.5 years of research working anywhere from a student assistant (doing lots of basic experiements for a postdoc) to working on a school science team project over the summer that the team planned and executed over the course of a year. </p>

<p>How much in detail do I need to go? Should I just say, “I worked on project X where I used several techniques such as A,B and C in hopes of answering our hypothesis which is Y”. Should I explain the reason the importance of the hypothesis? I feel so prepared for every other question except this one. I just don’t know how to start.</p>

17

<p>

Goodness. That sounds overkill, IMO. I didn’t read a SINGLE paper to prepare for interviews, and they all went great. I mean, the professors are just going to spend >50% of the time talking about their research in-depth anyway, so as long as you think on your feet and ask pertinent, insightful questions along the way, you’ll be fine.</p>

<p>

That really depends on the person who interviews you. You’ll probably just start off with the one-minute summary of your biological question, your experimental approach, and results. If the professor wants to hear more, then she’ll probe. If not, that might be all the research you end up talking about, before you move into discussing the grad program, the professor’s research, etc.</p>

18

<p>Haha,</p>

<p>Yeah my method is probably overkill but I hate being unprepared for things that I can technically prepare for (in this case knowing the professor research). They probably understand that I will be meeting with many faculty and it is unlikely I can remember everyone’s research projects.</p>

<p>Thanks for helping me out with the detail question. I figured it would be something along those lines. I usually see people say be able to “talk intelligently about your research”, but to me that sounds very vague and open ended since “intelligently” could mean many things to different people.</p>

<p>Thanks for the reply!</p>

19

<p>By “intelligently,” people mean you should know exactly what you did, and exactly why you did it that way.</p>

<p>Surprisingly, some interviewees end up not being able to coherently explain their research in-person (“Uhh, it’s what my post-doc supervisor said I should do…”). That is one of, really, only two reasons someone will get rejected post-interview. (The other reason is having a personality flaw.)</p>

20

<p>What you did, why you did it that way, and why it’s important. (Sorry krypton, I’m on my phone and don’t know how to quote.)</p>

<p>Remember that you’ll be talking to very smart, well-read people, but they may not be in your immediate subfield or be familiar with particular aspects of your approach. Avoid jargon and abbreviation, and always give the 10,000-foot view.</p>