<p>Rent is pretty high in La Jolla so I would suggest to try to get the super cheap graduate student housing at UCSD. The UCSD apartments are very nice, but I have heard that there is a long wait-list that I would suggest getting on ASAP if you want to go there. </p>
<p>[UCSD</a> ARCH Grad and Professional Student Housing Page](<a href=“http://hdh.ucsd.edu/arch/gradhousing.html]UCSD”>http://hdh.ucsd.edu/arch/gradhousing.html)</p>
<p>most students don’t live in la jolla proper unless they live in [subsidized] campus housing; i paid a little over $400/mo to share a large-ish bedroom in a 2br/2ba apartment. now my rent is $780/mo for a single room in a 3br/2ba apartment … but at least the stipend allows for that.</p>
<p>you WILL need a car in SD if you want to get out. public transportation is theoretically doable, if you don’t mind spending 90 minutes on a bus for a trip that would take you 25 minutes by car. and as for NYC (you probably know this already), zipcar is fantastically convenient for driving to jersey for costco and ikea.</p>
<p>swimming with the seals, though, is an experience you can’t duplicate in new york. 
i’ve had a few opportunities to watch them (and dolphins!) cavort playfully around my surfboard – it’s AMAZING.</p>
<p>I spent 5.5 years in San Diego - 4 at UCSD, and 1.5 more working at TSRI - and only lived in actual La Jolla because the dorms were on campus. Once I was done, I first moved north to Solana Beach where there’s beaches every 5 blocks, Del Mar race track in the summer and a beautiful road to campus if you went along Highway 1. Then I moved to Pacific Beach for a year, mostly for the social scene. Definitely expensive in the area that is surrounding the main street where all the bars, shops and restaurants are, but just move a couple blocks away from that and it becomes a little more affordable. I did get tired of the “Bro” scene, but I had fun when I was living there. The last place I ended up, was in Mission Hills, which is just north of downtown and just south of Mission/Pacific Beach and Old Town. Hillcrest and Mission Hills are probably my favorite neighborhoods in SD.</p>
<p>I never found myself bored in San Diego. New York probably has a lot more things to do, but that doesn’t mean SD is lacking. There’s the clubs/bars, golf courses, Zoo, beaches, surfing, glider port, Balboa Park for museums, a good music scene and great restaurants. I’m living in Indiana now and miss a lot of things about San Diego just writing about it. </p>
<p>One last thing. I definitely had a car, but its not exactly necessary, though I recommend it. Every place I lived had a nearby bus route that took me to campus. There’s also a shuttle that runs from the UCSD-Hillcrest Medical center straight to the UCSD-La Jolla School of Medicine. Definitely convenient and I was able to read papers and do work while riding the shuttle. I actually cycled to the shuttle and put my bike on the rack to have it with me. Convenient!</p>
<p>How bike-friendly is the area around UCSD? Are there any nice trails/paths?</p>
<p>macrophage, i asked Dartmouth and they said i was already rejected. i think they don’t reject you until you ask.</p>
<p>Mt. Sinai (Microbiology)</p>
<p>So I guess my chances of getting into Mt. Sinai off the waitlist look pretty grim at this point. I agree, I think international students have had an especially hard time this year when it comes to grad school admissions in general. Is anyone else still on the waitlist? I guess the good thing is that there is only a week and a half left to wait. Does anyone know how likely it is to get an offer from them by then? Should I keep annoying them with e-mails?</p>
<p>to HTLV111:</p>
<p>I know three people who got accepted off of Sinai’s wait list on the 13th-15th last year, so hope remains. So long as you’re reaffirmed your interest (and, if it’s true, told them that you’ll certainly go there if accepted) then I don’t really think you need to email them anymore, Lily is on top of things and will let you know ASAP.</p>
<p>Anyone planning to attend UNC this fall?</p>
<p>Ok so I haven’t posted here before, and I’m suddenly wishing I had. Trying to make my decision by the end of this week, and I think I’ve narrowed it down to either UCSD or Harvard. I applied mostly to umbrella bio programs (biological sciences at UCSD and BBS at Harvard), but I’m pretty sure I’m heading into neuroscience. I did confirm at both of these programs that I am free to join any neuroscience lab, and both schools have excellent neuroscience programs with many labs to choose from, so from a program standpoint they are about even. </p>
<p>The decision basically boils down to: UCSD was absolutely beautiful (I had no idea what the Salk was like before I visited), and the people there all seemed very cool, but I got the impression (and was told flat out by a few students) that you really have to choose between living near campus and not being close to anything (bars, music venues, restaurants), and living down closer to the city (Hillcrest seemed very cool) and then commuting up to the campus. This sucks in itself, but it also gives me the impression you’re kind of choosing between living with/near and forming friendships with people in your program and living in a city where you can meet people outside of it. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Harvard (whose interview I went into very unenthusiastically after things I’d heard on other visits) seemed to have a great program, the people seemed ok for the most part, and Boston seemed like a fantastic city. I applied almost entirely to schools I thought were either in or very close to major cities, and Harvard was by far the best in terms of being in the middle of its respective city.</p>
<p>So… right now I think I’m leaning toward Harvard, mainly because I want to be IN a city, not just near one. I turn 24 in the fall, so I’ll be at whichever program I choose for the rest of my 20’s, most likely. And I’m pretty sure I want to be in a city during that time – when I convinced myself to apply to grad school, I did so by convincing myself that I would be able to have a life outside of school, and I kind of see living in a city as being vital to that. But at the same time, I can’t help but feel like I had a better weekend at UCSD, and overall found the students there a bit more laid back and fun to be around.</p>
<p>Anyway…I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts. Did anyone interview at either of these places and have good/bad experiences? Is anyone considering similar issues as far as smaller school in a nice area vs. being in a larger city?</p>
<p>Ugh…I thought this would be an easy decision.</p>
<p>have you confirmed if the professors you are interested in at each program expect to be taking new students this year? It’s all very well and good for the program to say you can join whatever lab you want, but if the money’s not there, you’d be out of luck.</p>
<p>Allow me to be cynical and say that it’s wishful thinking to say that you’ll have much of a life outside school and much of a chance to experience Boston as a Harvard grad student. Many have dreamed that dream, few have lived it.</p>
<p>benny- i have lived for some time in both cambridge and la jolla.
i enjoyed my time in cambridge, 4 months out of the year. the area is bitterly cold for a very long time- which is fine if you are into that sort of thing. apart from that, the public transportation is awesome and certain neighborhoods are fantastic (north end, harvard square, newbury street, etc.).
la jolla is great- beautiful beaches, warm weather, and friendly people. however, public transportation is terrible. there are neighborhoods that are pretty cool (pacific beach, la jolla village, gaslamp, etc.).
both places are terribly expensive.
aside from these sorts of details, as the above poster suggests the most critical aspect when considering a program to think about how many professors you want to work with at each place (you should absolutely have more than 1 or 2 that at least seem somewhat interesting) and find out whether they might be accepting students. this is not to say you need to set up a rotation a year in advance but just see what the possibilities might be.
aside from that also carefully look over the student handbooks and what not. what does each place require you to do? which sounds like a better fit? really look it over carefully.
good luck with your decision and congrats for getting into two great programs.</p>
<p>First off, thanks for all the replies.</p>
<p>As far as confirming that professors I’m interested in are taking on students – this was basically my plan as of 2-3 weeks ago. I was going to look through research profiles again and make a list of professors for each school, email them all asking that question, and then compare results and decide). But the truth is I still don’t know exactly what I want to do (hence the large size of each program being a plus), and as I started making those lists, I remembered something I realized as I went on my interviews: reading a professor’s 3 paragraph research description and sitting down face to face with them are two completely different things. Honestly, I found that some of my most enjoyable/exciting interviews at the places I visited were with profs I was assigned randomly, doing work pretty far removed from the profs I had requested interviews with. So I think finding a lab for me is going to be as much about finding a PI with whom I have a good rapport as it is about getting into a lab doing specific research. </p>
<p>As far as a life outside of grad school…I realize it is an oxymoron of sorts. But I think that just makes being in a city even more desirable. I love music and going to shows, and being able to live relatively close to work and yet at the same time be able to walk a few blocks from my place and see a band I like would be fantastic. And obviously as a grad student you aren’t out drinking every night, but if you live within walking distance of a bar, then the prospect of meeting a friend for a couple beers after a long day in the lab seems much more realistic. I spent the last year and a half working a full time job (a job I really did not like), commuting nearly an hour each way, and was still able to take advantage of being in a city during that time (somewhat…). Sure, I expect grad school to be a much bigger time commitment, but I also expect to enjoy doing the work, and therefore not be as exhausted after a 12 hour day as I was after 8 hours at a job that was destroying my soul (melodramatic exaggeration, but you get my point).</p>
<p>All that said…I have sort of grown to hate cold weather. Mutation, would you say the nice 4 months in Boston made up for the other 8?</p>
<p>It depends on just how much you hate snow and cold weather. Personally, I like the weather in New England - sure, the winters are cold and sometimes snowy, but the other three seasons are awesome. But some people are just absolutely miserable when it’s cold or snowy, and for these people SoCal may be a better choice.</p>
<p>Got rejects from NWU IGP and Dartmouth MCB. Really stung too much.
And the lady at the frontdesk at Vanderbilt told me decisions on applications from my home country havent been made yet! What! Do they make admissionh decision country wise?!
But anyways, I think Im heading to another gr8 school and a great program, IBGP at UPitt.
Any1 else here (or u know some1) who’s gonna be at IBGP Pitt for Fall 09?</p>
<p>macrophage, the country-wise decision making is ridiculous, but is unfortunately true for at least some schools…</p>
<p>Finally, I decided to decline Mt Sinai and join Genetics at Stony Brook/Cold Spring Harbor :)</p>
<p>Regarding New England, I beg strongly to differ with Aceflyer. 
It might work better if the three seasons other than winter actually summed up to more than 50% of the year… </p>
<p>I can handle the strangely scorching summers and the occasional blizzard in Boston, but the freezing gray and depressing spitty pseudo-precipitation that hangs in the air 80% of the time without reaching the ground really does make my life harder (though it helps when I’d rather stay in lab and work instead of go outside and play in the spit). </p>
<p>If you are used to nice weather, get ready to lower your standards… the very rare patch of sunlight and green grass (usually brown) can make my day. Needless to say I’ll be glad to be heading to SoCal!</p>
<p>Congrats Leukemia! Good luck :)</p>
<p>Thanks aldo, you are really helpful. I appreciate your opinion :)</p>