<p>Is it appropriate or even expected to send a thank you email or follow-up to the profs you interview with? </p>
<p>Will all profs you interview with have read your app/statement or do you assume they haven’t?</p>
<p>
Appropriate, certainly. Expected, no.</p>
<p>
You should assume they haven’t. Some will openly admit to you that they haven’t read your folder, but even for those that have, it’s useful to refresh their memories a bit.</p>
<p>How many people on average do you interview with at each school?</p>
<p>Hello everybody. I’m glad I found this page. I have some interviews but am starting to go through some serious self-doubt. </p>
<p>Do interviewers/professors ever expect more from you than what is stated in your application? For example, if I never mentioned in my essay/resume that I performed a certain experiment before, but they asked me if I did, would they be disappointed with my answer? In other words, is the ultimate purpose of the interview to test you and probe you for more information (hoping you have more experience/knowledge than your application indicated), or is it more along the lines of…“we plan to accept this person based on their application alone but we’re just checking that we actually like them (his/her personality) and that they’re for real…”? To put it more bluntly, if you already have an interview, does that mean your credentials, skills, experience are in the clear?</p>
<p>The reason I ask is because my previous lab experiences don’t have quite as much to do with what I want to research and the techniques they use. Though I’ve gotten interviews, I’m still not sure whether or not professors will be OK with that.</p>
<p>I don’t think you need to know all of the relevant techniques to join a lab. You will get trained in graduate school. </p>
<p>From what people have said these in these forums, it seems that if you have an interview, you will get accepted as long as you don’t screw up your interview. I don’t know the validity of this though.</p>
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No, they would not be disappointed.</p>
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Answer in bold.</p>
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If you can back up your credentials and demonstrate good knowledge of your experiences, then yes, they are in the clear.</p>
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Usually doesn’t matter, especially if what you researched and what you want to research fall under the same broad category. Even if they’re very different, the program offered you an interview, so they must think you’ll be capable of getting into that field of research.</p>
<p>Such a helpful thread… Thank you to all the current grad students who are so willing to guide the prospective ones esp. molliebatmit and kryptonsa36 (who are also on the 2012 results thread). :)</p>
<p>Hahaha! You’re welcome!</p>
<p>It’s the least I could do, purposefully distracting myself from thinking about my upcoming qualifying exam…</p>
<p>What are some “horror” questions that you’ve all received in the past?</p>
<p>One thing you all should be aware of is that the current graduate students in the program also have a (minor) say in the admissions. In my program we have a graduate student sit on the AdCom itself. So you’re not just being interviewed by the faculty, you’re also being informally interviewed by the students as you interact with them. Basically, don’t be that creepy/annoying person. Don’t ask where you can get crack, don’t rummage through people’s belongings at the student party, don’t be rude or insulting to anyone (especially about their research!). All true stories, btw.</p>
<p>Basically, in most programs, if you’ve gotten an invite, you’ll likely 75%+ be accepted, but those 25% that get rejected are usually due to the fact that they’re creepy, or emotionally immature, or *******s. Of course, this isn’t true for all programs, (I know U of Chicago Micro has a post-interview acceptance rate of 30-40%), but most programs have high acceptance rates.</p>
<p>Not to stress you all out even more…</p>
<p>As someone who has slight social anxiety, my shyness coming off as “creepy” worries me.</p>
<p>@FiveBoro89, a lot of the people are going to be shy/stressed out and that’s fine. It’s the ones that are jerks or extremely creepy that get weeded out.</p>
<p>I disagree with the typical line that rejection after interview is commonly for social reasons – people do get rejected post-interview, and it doesn’t mean they’re kitten-eating psychos.</p>
<p>You’re being evaluated in an interview weekend for whether you’d make a good colleague in that department, and rejections happen when you don’t fit that model in some way, whether it’s because you don’t do a good job talking about science, or you don’t have a reasonably clear sense of your research interests, or you don’t communicate clearly, or whatever.</p>
<p>You certainly can be rejected for purely social reasons, but I don’t think most people who are rejected are rejected because somebody thought they were weird.</p>
<p>@molliebatmit While true that many post interview rejections are not just for social reasons, it is a factor that my AdCom, at least, considers.</p>
<p>Would not knowing whether you want to go into industry or academia after you graduate count as not knowing what your interests are?</p>
<p>There’s also something to be said about being weird/awkward versus being downright unlikeable. A weird but competent individual deserves to be admitted; an arrogant, obnoxious applicant does not deserve admission no matter how brilliant she is. People will remember to bear the distinction in mind.</p>
<p>Last year, our program admitted an EXTREMELY weird individual. As in, I capitalized, bolded, and italicized the word “extremely,” and it’s still an understatement. As in, even professors talked openly about how weird the person was. But the person had the qualities of a good scientist and wasn’t an *******, so was admitted.</p>
<p>Would anyone know if admission to Stanford biosciences (Biology Home Program) post-interview is more competitive than the norm (norm meaning generally most of the students interviewed are accepted)?</p>
<p>I would guess that some applicants would tend to overcompensate for nerves in interviews by sounding a little arrogant. Sometimes arrogance is also a product of not being informed; if you walk into an interview and assume the attitude that “you’re in”, that can be bad. If you don’t really know much about a topic but are trying to sound confident anyway, it can come across as arrogance. I’ve seen these things happen in non-academic contexts, so I imagine it’s similar…</p>
<p>“Weird” is relative. Academia has higher thresholds for “weird” than other industries. I wouldn’t worry about introversion or shyness keeping you out, FiveBoro. Everyone gets nervous for interviews, even the most outgoing people.</p>
<p>If a professor calls you about an interview separate from an email interview offer, can you assume that you will be interviewing with him/her?</p>
<p>@lost in elysia</p>
<p>With the way the academic job market looks right now, it’s just a fact that not all PhDs in the biological sciences will end up in academia. Some programs and specific PIs feel very strongly that their role is to train future professors/researchers, however-- not people who want to work in industry.</p>
<p>I’m not entirely sure yet which direction I want to go in, so I want to keep my options open. That’s what I told a PI in a phone interview when he asked point blank which I planned on doing… basically, I said I want to follow the good research opportunities, where ever they lead.</p>