How's everyone's admissions going?

Rejection from Yale and no news from my other 10 places. I've managed to not look at grad cafe for a week and a half if that means anything......

I see a lot of engineers around here. Are there any active thread members that are pursuing a PhD in a biology field? Right now I have strong interests in metabolism, immunology, and in general, molecular biology. I'm entertaining the idea of going for a masters, and reevaluating my goals after that before dedicating myself to a six year program as I seem to be in a bit of a funk right now.

I'm currently doing a master's in genetics/molecular biology/biochemistry, and in 1-1.5 years I'll be looking at doing a PhD in a field related to that.
Currently trying to find an internship though to finish off my master's, but it's hard to find places that do research on what I want.

Slick, did you have any particular reason for getting your master's first rather than jumping straight into a PhD? Also, how is it structured? Is it coursework heavy, or are you getting in plenty of quality research experience? I really do have a passion for biology, and I've enjoyed my research opportunities the most, but I'm not sure it is a field I want to make a career in (if that even makes sense). I can graduate next Christmas at the earliest, but I'm considering adding on psychology or sociology as a double major, and possibly pursuing a graduate program from there.

I'm not in the US but in europe, and here it's super standard to do a master's first. Most PhD programs here laugh you off if you don't have a master's, and there's only very few combined 6 year programs. So basically it's just assumed you do a bachelor's and then straight on to a master's. Pure bachelor here is almost useless in the biology field.

My master is 20 months (excluding vacations) and about at least 10 months of that is required to be practical work (an internship of 4 months somewhere and 6 months of working with a graduate student). I went very light on courses though, so I did 8 months work with a graduate student, another 6 months with a graduate student in another lab and still need to do my internship.

I'm planning to do an internship somewhere in the states though, and not quite sure where I want to do a PhD yet. I don't feel bound to any continent.

I suggest having a look at the AAAS Science Careers Forum. http://scforum.aaas.org/
It's full of good advice, concentrated in the life sciences. Be aware the culture there is way different than 2p2 though.

Undergraduate biology is equally useless here, really only good for getting your foot in the door for some entry level position possibly. I'm not so much concerned with the monetary aspect of a career anymore, but I do want to be in a position that utilizes my skills. And I feel like biology is a pretty saturated field, so going through a master's program will probably be almost necessary here in the US in just a few years from now.

Thanks for the link zoltan.

I'd greatly appreciate any useful insight.

I applied to Applied Math master's programs and a few Statistics programs for next year. My decision is basically going to come down to this.

~50th ranked school that offered me full funding and is very close to where I live now.

~10-15th ranked school in the area I want to live long term, but no funding. Out of state tuition is ~25k.

I'm not a competitive PhD applicant at this point so don't start on that. My thought is that I have a much better chance at admission to a top tier PhD program (perhaps even staying at the same department) if I enroll at the better ranked school. On the other hand, it would probably be easier to get a kickass GPA at the easier school. On top of that, funding is very nice.

On the downside, I can complete my Master's in 1 year at the better ranked school which means I wouldn't lose a year in the admissions cycle. The worse ranked school is 1.5 years so I guess I could take a small break in between that and starting my PhD which might be nice.

Ultimately unless the department seems to be a very bad fit I would probably want to do my PhD at the exact department I've been admitted to without funding. It's a great school, in the city I want to live in, is particularly strong in this field, etc.

It's worth noting I won't have to take on debt if I go to the school where I don't have funding. My parents have agreed to support me an extra year (for what reason I don't know) but I feel really bad mooching off them an extra year when I have an offer with funding from a 2nd tier school.

Anyone have advice?

1. Make sure you really want to go to grad school.
2. Go to the better school. I don't think it's really close at all.

pm school names.

post long term goals including what tier school and what type of phd program and why you think you'll be a better applicant to a PhD program after a one year masters. keep in mind you apply in November so you'll have a year off unless you think that you'll be more qualified 3 months into your MS program.

PS if you're not a competitive applicant to a top tier program now, I think its unlikely that a MS from a crappy school changes that unless you do research with a top tier mentor who is at Joe blow state college by choice.

3. listen to wyman instead of me.

haha your points are valid. The name of the school is less important than your work (not your grades) but there's a correlation; good schools are good for a reason.

Long term goals-- Probably industry as opposed to academia. Research interests are wide open because I haven't done very much (mostly just senior thesis) and don't really know what I'm after yet. Everything from Biostat to Computational Finance could be an option as to where I end up ultimately. FWIW my favorite areas so far are my Stats sequence and my Diff Eq sequence.

I expect to be a better applicant to a PhD program after my Masters because I was an Econ major for 5 semesters (I actually completed the major and then started a second in Math). At the end of this semester I will have completed 27 semester hours of Math at or above Calc III in the last 4 semesters. It's been a full-on sprint. I have the prereqs fulfilled but hardly have outstanding preparation. A Master's would sort of be like a 5/6th year of undergrad to take a bunch more Math, get research experience, refine my interests a little bit, and actually get to know faculty. This way I can say something deeper than "I like Math and I'm pretty good at it so you should let me into your school" when it comes time to apply for PhD programs. Similarly, so my LORs can be something other than "He's a good student, comes to class, has strong interest in the subject, but I don't know much about him other than that he got an A in my class."

I haven't taken the GRE subject test. There are several classes that I would take during a Masters (that I have not taken yet) but show up on the subject test. AFAIK the subject test means a lot to good PhD programs and not having it would be shooting myself in the foot.

Finally, because I don't know enough about Stats or App Math right now to decide between them. In theory, I love the idea of Stats but feel like I haven't taken enough "real math" to be able to commit to that yet.

I am starting a Ph.D in Applied math at UC Denver in the fall. I have a BS in physics and an MS in mathematics. I am fairly certain I would not have gotten into a Ph.D program right after my Bachelors, but during my master's work I developed strong relationships with several professors, published papers, and gave a talk at a national conference.

Your Letters of recommendation will be stronger because you will work more closely with professors, especially your thesis advisor. You will also have more networking opportunities with other graduate programs. You will also have a better idea of what field of mathematics you want to work on during your Ph.D.

A word of warning though, some schools do not like to take people with MS degrees from other universities into their math program.

I did not take the subject test fwiw.

Little bit of a random question but I figured this might be a good thread for it. Anyone here have any recommendations for a powerpoint/presentation clicker that isn't too expensive? I've never shopped for one, all I know is I'm tired of walking back and forth to the keyboard for my presentations and I've been putting this purchase off for awhile.

Are you using your own projector? I've never seen a digital projector that didn't have a pointer/IR clicker bundled with it. But Tiger Direct has a bunch that are <$50. Pretty standard technology I think.

For posterity, excerpts of what I sent via PM to il_martilo:

I've always been an advocate of going to the cheap (/free) school and doing well. I got a full ride [as an undergrad] and went there for undergrad instead of some better-known schools. If you knew you could get a decent paper out during your year at [not highly ranked school], I'd say do that.

What I'd really recommend is calling and talking to someone in the [highly ranked] department very familiar with admissions. How likely is it that an MS student would be admitted to the PhD program if he does well in the MS program? Etc. Once you have these conversations with a few people, go to the school that you're most comfortable with -- and part of this could be the nature of the conversations you have with them. If you feel like the people at school X were really friendly and those at Y were total dicks, don't go to Y, even if it's ranked higher; Masters degrees are cash cows for these institutions, so don't take it as some sort of given that if they liked you enough to admit you now, they're more likely to fund your graduate work.

That said, I don't think it's a career ender (which is why I asked about career ambitions) to get a PhD from [low ranked institution]. If they'll admit and fund you for your MS and PhD, I think it's great. Look into what the faculty do (research-wise), and see where the grads are getting jobs. As I said, when you're on the (academic) market, it's almost universally what you've done, not where you went (but better advisors create students who do better work, typically, so better schools are better for a reason).

[I emailed a colleague of mine at the highly ranked school to ask him his thoughts. He's in pure math, not applied.]

From colleague:
<<I know nothing about the applied math department, which is completely separate from my department. That said, in my department his chances would be very greatly improved by having done an MS here.

If he applied to applied math, you/he should email: [grad student, who is a] grad student in applied math, and started as a masters student, I think, and is now a Ph.D. student. >>

re: stats v math
You can do many things with a stats MS, true. But don't make that decision yet. You can game the system a lot of ways; one such would be doing a math MS, applying to the PhD program, getting accepted (and funded) and then dual-degreeing a MS in stats (except not finishing your PhD).

Point is, you're not giving much up by declining the stats offer if you're willing to take the time later. You likely do give up on the math if you go stats though.

Additionally, you could find your favorite stats offer and ask if you could defer it a year to do a "pure" math MS at such-and-such. Then reevaluate.

Lots of options.

I liked [alternate, top-20 school] also and considered there. But Ann Arbor is awesome, and I had some friends there already. It's a *very* social dept; the grad students are a lot of fun (on the whole), so I picked [Michigan].

Nope (at least not as of now), more for various university classroom settings and conferences. I'll check out that brand though, thanks. Just didn't know if there was any product I wanted to avoid.

not a brand, an online electronics store

San Miguel!

This thing is fantastic. It's relatively small and lightweight, has a laser pointer, lets you click forward & backward in a presentation, and can even function as a mouse.

for Pyschology Phds:

my girlfriend is going to be applying to PhD programs next year and while she has stellar results in labs and gpa etc, her GREs aren't that great. she's been hearing that this isn't that big of a problem, if a researcher wants her in bad enough, it'll happen regardless of scores but i wanted to ask around to get some other opinions. ty.

This is probably going to be very department-specific. At my grad school, GREs were essentially meaningless (in fact, I took my GREs after I was accepted, simply because the university graduate office required scores). There was a single faculty in my department, though, who would use the GRE score as a reason to keep someone out, and would occasionally stick to his guns about this.