HHMI-NIH Research Scholars Program (Cloisters)

[chitown82]

hey,

i asked this in the allo forum, but hopefully ill get a better reponse here. is anyone applying to the cloisters program? just curious to see if there are any fellow applicants that browse SDN

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[Vytorin77]

Replied on the other thread. Am appying to the Medical Fellows Program only since I can't move to the NIH to do the Cloisters program.

I'd also be curious to see if there are other applicants on SDN and if others have experiences with these programs.

 

[bobg504]

I am applying to both the HHMI Closters Program and the NIH CRTF Program as well (have completed both apps). I hope I get one!

 

[myt]

Anybody else notice on the HHMI application that they give you 21,000 characters for your research plan, but they also say that it should be 2,100 words?? Same problem with the personal statement (they say 7,000 characters should be one page).

Anybody else find an issue with this?

 

[chitown82]

hey, i noticed the character limit problem too. they suggest a page or so for the personal statement but one page is well under 7000 characters. im limiting myslef to page rather than the character limit.

 

[Vytorin77]

Yeah, I noticed it too and was planning to go by the character limits. But you are right, that does put you over the page limit, especially with their random settings for the margins. Maybe there's somewhere to email and ask about this, because I don't want my stuff to get cut off.

 

[Vytorin77]

I think this clarifies our concerns. It just came to my school acct:

Dear ---:

Please see important information about the Research Training Fellowships for Medical
Students application below.

Transcripts:
We realize that your undergraduate transcripts from AMCAS may not be complete and will
take this into account in the evaluation of your application. You can also ask your dean
to include any special circumstances related to your academic performance in the dean's
letter. Unless you did not apply to medical or dental school through AMCAS, please DO
NOT send us any hard copies of your transcripts. In addition, please note that we are
NOT requesting medical or dental school transcripts this year.

Character limits:
For all of your uploads, please follow the character limit guidelines within the
application system. The page and word limits are just approximations and can vary for
different programs and formats. It is OK to exceed the approximated number of pages
listed as long as you adhere to the character limits.

Figures in research plan:
For optimal figure resolution in the final application PDF, convert your file to a PDF
before uploading.

For questions related to the application submission process, please contact HHMI at
[email protected]. For technical assistance, please contact the support team at
[email protected].

Thank you,
HHMI Competition System Support Team

 

[myt]

Still, it makes you wonder how they could have gotten the character and word and page limits so off!

 

[gclax30]

Yeah, I had the same question about the character limits for the PS and all that. I emailed the program a few months ago and here is what they said:

"The 7000 character limit is a padded number of characters to account for the many characters in Word that count for more than one character. We have found that this number of characters ensures that conversions from Mac work correctly as well without exceeding the expected number.

The important part of the instructions is that this is approximately 1 page – we aren’t saying that it is exactly one page. (The number of characters is what we validate against.)

So, it seems that due to the possibility of Word counting characters as more than one character, the actual character count does not come out to 7000 characters, but should be about one page."


I was getting scared there for a while but this definitely cleared things up. Hope it helps! Good luck to everyone who applied this year, it sounds like a fantastic program and I hope to get lucky and meet some of you there.

 

[chitown82]

the character limit thing is confusing so i just ended up limiting my essay to about 1.25 pages. everything showed up nicely when i previewed the final application and im assuming my app reflects the preview pretty closely. anyone know any details as to when we might hear back regarding interviews? i know the website says mid-feb but does anyone have more specific info? also, will we find out via email or regular mail?

 

[bobg504]

the character limit thing is confusing so i just ended up limiting my essay to about 1.25 pages. everything showed up nicely when i previewed the final application and im assuming my app reflects the preview pretty closely. anyone know any details as to when we might hear back regarding interviews? i know the website says mid-feb but does anyone have more specific info? also, will we find out via email or regular mail?

I call them and they told me that we should here something via email and snail mail by the first or second week in Feb.( she said around Feb. 4th) Interviews will take place the first week in March and we will be notified of our acceptance or rejection by the last week in March. This is also the same timeline for the NIH-CRTP Program as well.

 

[myt]

Anybody here applying to the HHMI medical student research fellowship (not cloisters)? Do you know the timeline? I don't think there are interviews for that one.

 

[chitown82]

I call them and they told me that we should here something via email and snail mail by the first or second week in Feb.( she said around Feb. 4th) Interviews will take place the first week in March and we will be notified of our acceptance or rejection by the last week in March. This is also the same timeline for the NIH-CRTP Program as well.

sweet. thanks for the info. any idea how many ppl applied this year?

 

[fajita22]

Has anyone heard yet? I know last year they found out on Feb 10 but since it was stated earlier that well find out this week.. I am getting more nervous as time approaches..

 

[chitown82]

nothing so far. i called them last week cuz i wanted to change my mailing address (had to move to a new apt unexpectedly) and i asked the lady when they would notify us and she send in week or two but she wasnt sure. when bobg504 called, they told him around feb 4. anyone wanna make a third phone call to find out when for sure (i hope bobg504 is right!)

 

[chitown82]

odd...

i got a missed call this morning from a 301 number and called it back to realize it was the HHMI....i told the lady who answered i had gotten a missed call from them and the lady said she had no idea who called (the caller ID number must have been the generic number for the HHMI). no message was left. oh well.