<p>Caltech represent</p>
<p>Hey ya’ll,</p>
<p>would anyone here know how applicants are supposed to go about their decision-making by the 15th of April, if they’re still on the waitlist for another school?</p>
<p>i am waiting on Yale but it doesn’t seem likely that they are going to contact me before the 15th. Meanwhile, my other schools are pressuring me. I would definitely be interested in Yale’s program, if I do get an acceptance offer. However, meanwhile am I supposed to tell one of the schools that I already am accepted that I would accept their offer (I do have a program that I am interested in out of these)? OR could I just wait til I hear back from Yale and then make my decision? What happens when students pass the 15th deadline? Also, what happens if I make my choice, but I want to change it after the 15th because of a change in my waitlist status?</p>
<p>Haha, I think I asked the same question in five different ways just now, but I would really appreciate any answers!!</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>bumblieolie, i’d suggest you go for the school that already granted you an offer. after 15th they will not guarantee the position any more, which means you may lose the offer. if you accepted an offer, you can’t change your mind after 15th.</p>
<p>When did you interview at Yale? </p>
<p>My guess is that, if you haven’t already heard from them, you haven’t been accepted. I strongly suggest that you move on and decide which in-hand program would be best for you.</p>
<p>Any MIT Biology people?</p>
<p>bumblie -</p>
<p>I would suggest explaining your situation to the coordinators at Yale so that you can get a better idea if you’d be accepted. If you’re high on the waitlist, then maybe you could get an extension from your other school. If you’re low on the waitlist, then it would probably be better to take the offer you have in hand. </p>
<p>Your other school will probably be understanding if you make them aware of your situation (if you’re high on Yale’s wait-list) and most schools are more than happy to grant extensions on the April 15th deadline.</p>
<p>It’s not ideal to rescind an acceptance of an offer. Remember that the potential P.I.s at the school you accept then decline the offer are future colleagues.</p>
<p>Also, I’ve heard that Yale can be really slow in the decision-making process. I had friend that was accepted in May, way after they took another school’s offer. I think you should call them.</p>
<p>bumblieolie- you say definitely interested if you got an offer… so if you did get one, you would still have to consider that option? I had gotten off the waitlist for Yale and personally, I was tempted but decided that I really needed to visit the school and talk with students/PIs before I could actually commit the next 6 years of my life there. Also, interestingly, I was debating between two other schools at the time and immediately knew I would decline one of them when I got the offer from Yale. I know other people don’t need to visit a school before accepting but it wasn’t worth it to me.</p>
<p>I agree with sydneya that it is important to visit a program before making such an important commitment. Programs, much like applicants, may appear very different in person than they do on paper.</p>
<p>I’m going to UVM (CMB) with a tuition/health/stipend TA!!! Ecstatic.</p>
<p>congrats AstarothCY!</p>
<p>I was on Yale’s waitlist last year. I told them last year that I needed to get back to another top10, but that did not push them along. I decided to withdraw for the reasons others have said. If you have other good options, I would do the same. I do not think that many people got off the list last year, and they probably will not make a decision until after April 15. </p>
<p>I know a lot of alumni of Yale’s graduate program. They all hate that place and told me to stay far away. They were not suprised that the school would try to take students from other schools after the students had previously committed to that other school. It sounds like those practices regularly occur there.</p>
<p>I stressed out a lot about this last year, and in retrospect I think it was not worth the stress. Do you really want to go to a school that is not afraid to screw over other schools? If they are not afraid to do this to the other big schools, they would not be afraid to screw you over as a student. I have not regretted my decision to withdraw.</p>
<p>Good luck with the big decision.</p>
<p>The thing with Yale is that unless you’re doing immunology, the fact that it is in New Havens overrides the goods.</p>
<p>I opened the application initially and then realized, “what the hell am I thinking? I don’t want to live there!” and quickly closed the apps.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone should consider a school based on location alone. Yale’s MBB, MCDB are examples of very good departments. I recommend it to anyone in biophysics, structure determination of RNA or protein. And I believe that many cities have both good neighborhood and bad neighborhood.</p>
<p>^ except la jolla.</p>
<p>while i agree that location isn’t everything, it can be a BIG thing to consider. i actually chose where to apply by identifying a handful of major metropolitan areas around the country, then looking to see what schools were in the area. thankfully, for the biomed sciences at least, that’s still a safe approach.</p>
<p>Nobody should go to schools based on location alone but there are enough options that you can choose not to apply based on location alone.</p>
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<p>This is understandable. They cannot decide how many students to accept from the waitlist until they first know what their yield is going to be from the students they’ve already extended offers to.</p>
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<p>Wait, could you elaborate on why these alumni feel that way? (Feel free to PM me if you would rather not post this publicly - I honestly want to know!)</p>
<p>I don’t understand though why doing a waitlist would be construed as trying to “take students from other schools after the students had previously committed to that other school.” No one is forcing a student to stay on the waitlist. No one is forcing a waitlisted student to accept an offer if one is extended. And definitely no one is forcing a student to withdraw a commitment to another school.</p>
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<p>Why would a program want to ‘screw’ over one of their students? They have quite a bit invested in each of their students. They gain nothing by screwing anyone over.</p>
<p>Waitlisting, again, is also not an uncommon phenomenon among biological sciences programs. I don’t see how having a waitlist could be construed as an attempt to “screw over other schools.”</p>
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<p>I don’t think that’s quite a fair statement to make about New Haven. Sure, it has its downsides and rough parts, but it’s not nearly as bad as it’s often made out to be, and there are worse places. I hear important parts of Philadelphia and NYC are at least just as bad, if not worse, and crime near or around campus is considered a problem in cities ranging from Columbus to Philadelphia to Ithaca.</p>
<p>Aceflyer-</p>
<p>Most of the alumni felt that Yale was not a collegial place. The PIs have egos and were fine screwing over neighboring labs and even the people they trained. I have heard story after story about PIs doing “unethical” things that harmed other labs or people in their own labs. I will not name instances as I have promised my sources.</p>
<p>In regards to screwing over their students, I have heard tons of stories about this. Again I cant go in details. The general consistence amongst the alumni I talked to was that the school/faculty did not take the students best interest at heart.</p>
<p>The problem with Yale’s waitlist is that it is unusual. In my program like most others, they accept so many people in hopes of filling up a class of X. Sometimes they overshoot it and other times they undershoot. They then just deal with the consequences and plan accordingly the next year.</p>
<p>The schools sat an April 15 deadline for a reason-get their class list finalized and plan accordingly. I feel that it is ridiculous for Yale to think that they are so superior to other schools that they can defy this agreement and extend offers after April 15. It can really screw some programs over. I think that they need to settle their waitlist well in advanced of the deadline like all other schools. If other programs started to disregard the April 15 deadline, Yale would get a little taste of their own medicine and I do not think they would like it. Fortunately, other schools have ethical codes.</p>
<p>mtlve-</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply. I’ve heard horror stories myself- and in fact from very reliable sources- about ‘bad’ PIs or a ‘bad’ overall atmosphere at places ranging from MIT and Stanford and Caltech to public state schools (and by ‘public state schools’ I am not just referring to the famous UCs!). But then I’ve also heard numerous reliable accounts from others disputing these horror stories. For example, talking about MIT alone, there are many who swear by how ultra-competitive the place is. Some reliable sources have reported cases of students sabotaging each others’ work, faculty members directing students to engage in ‘unethical’ activities, etc. in the quest for ‘success’. Others will swear that MIT is one of the most collaborative places they know of - and they will have numerous anecdotes about students going above and beyond to help each other out. I think this is all true - there are indeed many students who are very collaborative and trustworthy, and there are indeed some students who may attempt to backstab or sabotage others.</p>
<p>I think the gist of it is that one’s grad school experience depends almost exclusively on what one makes of it - and what one makes of it depends to a very large part on selecting the ‘right’ PI. Not all PIs are ‘right’ for all students. And of course I think every school has a few ‘bad’ apples, so to speak. I think it’s probably unjustified to ‘blacklist’ an entire institution based merely on these horror reports, no matter how reliable the sources. If one were to adopt this methodology probably every school in the country would be ‘blacklisted’.</p>
<p>Final Update</p>
<p>All neuroscience/umbrella biomed programs
Applied: Yale, UCSD, Michigan, UPenn, Rockefeller, Mt.Sinai, NYU, Harvard, MUSC
Interview and accepted: UPenn, Mt.Sinai, MUSC
Decision: Mt.Sinai!</p>
<p>It was an incredibly difficult decision as both the programs at Penn and Sinai were great! I absolutely loved the program at Penn, but in the end the research fit was slightly better at Sinai and I felt more of a rapport with the PIs I talked with there, so I have decided to go where the science beckoned.
Glad to have a final decision.</p>
<p>Is it neccesarily to formally decline offers or if schools don’t hear from you by 4/15, they will simply assume that you decline their offer?</p>