12 Jan 2024

Purdue University - West Lafayette

Purdue University Interdisciplinary Life Science Program (PULSe), PhD (F24)

Accepted via E-mail on 12 Jan 2024

Note

Interviewed on 20th. Told that the result would be out by Jan 15th., but given Mon 15th is MLK we expected decisions to be made today (12th). The program director said she only send out waitlist and acceptance decisions (i.e., rejections will be sent when they update student status in the app system) and got me really worried when I got nothing until 7pm local time. Offer was received at around 9pm. After info exchange with fellow applicants we realized that they interviewed way more students than they should (150-270 students; taking only 50ish and expect 25ish to matriculate), so don’t get your hopes high even if you got an interview. The staves are really friendly though. — About me: International, Bachlor’s degree completed 4 yes ago at a top public university. 2yrs of lab technician work (lab monkey, no autonomy whatsoever, no knowledge on the bigger picture) at school, followed by a research role at a small Pharma for 3 years (no wet lab component; literature review/experiment design/project proposal and assessment). Went back to home country after OPT exhausted, and got a remote research role with a PI at Harvard (machine learning/computer vision). Education background is biological science with no formal CS education, intend to pursue a PhD in bioinformatics/computational biology.

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