Wow! So much to discuss in this thread! At my school, I've never seen this happen.
Do you ever see people that are rated highly by all (both?) their interviewers end up not getting in?
This is exactly the case at my school. Note to all interviewees: in a group interview, rolling your eyes at other people's answers, or looking bored is a death sentence. I have written int he past as to what other sins merit a post-interview outright rejection, which is actually a rare occurrence.
Post interview straight rejections seem like they could have only been the result of poor interview performance. If not there is more pointless sadism in this process then I first realized.
I believe that lying on an app and having it uncovered, or some other dishonesty that would be discovered during an interview, would apply here, Lib.
Would anyone who is offered an interview be rejected post interview for anything other than their interview performance(excluding Barron Trumps) ? Rather than just placing them on the bottom of the waitlist.
My learned colleague is at an MD school located up int he stratosphere. I'm at a reasonably decent DO school. Ye what
LizzyM describes here is 100% identical to what I have seen! Sometimes "fine" isn't good enough.
Keep in mind that there are interviews that are fine and there are those that blow us away. Sometime an applicant has to blow us away to balance an otherwise deficient application (but one hopes to be blown away, particularly if the applicant brings something rare to the table). However, if the applicant is merely "fine" or "adequate" or "acceptable" then maybe that isn't good enough and there will be adcom members who will argue that the applicant will not be able to do well academically and get through the first two years despite an exceptional personality that would make it possible to be a good physician. Sometimes we don't always agree about what the predictive value of undergrad record and MCAT with respect to board scores and completion in 4 or 5 years. That can generate a long discussion about a candidate that someone will champion while others will question why the applicant was even interviewed.
Turning to PhD program interviews, this is correct. I went to PhD program in my field at a top medical school. The most students matriculated in any given year was six, and the smallest was three. The numbers depend upon how many qualified people interview. Good grad students are hard to find. It's a buyers market for them, unlike for med schools.
Don't interviewees for grad school get their flights + place to stay paid for? Would be very interested to hear how the ratios compared at selective PhD programs
Most programs don't interview many applicants. Ex. A PI in clinical psychology program at a HYP that I am familiar with, interviewed 5 students last year, accepted two. 3/4 PIs in the department with similar numbers makes it not so expensive to pay for everything.
They're not. The graduate program or school pays for students. Most PhD programs get training grants to pay for this kind of stuff. PIs may partially pay into this via indirects from extramural grants. 2/5 sounds about right, from what I remember about interviewing candidates.
Are PIs on the hook for the costs? Did not realize that
Something like 2 accepted out of 5 interviewed actually sounds like the ratio at most med schools though
I think that this is also true. But I do remember sitting next to one candidate during a dinner and thinking how odd he was. Other people picked up o this and he wasn't accepted.
Yes. I'm familiar with the top PhD programs in chemistry and once you get to the interview stage, the chance of you being accepted is very high, if not unity. Interviews are more of a formality and don't have that much weight in decisions for grad school.
You're correct, efle. The students choose which labs they want to work in.
And not all labs have people rotate through during every rotation slot. Remember, there are more PIs than first year students. There were never enough in my own lab that we had to vote for our fave among the three. But one guy named Hans (who looked exactly liked the character in "Where's Waldo?") rotated through our lab and he just was a pain in the ass. He had wanted to go to a
C elegans lab and they all voted him down! He narrowed down his choices to our lab and a
Drosophila one, and I still vividly remember the day he decided to pick a lab. He was explaining to me his decision, and I was dreading, just
dreading, that he was going to pick ours. But he was actually explaining why he chose the other lab.
You just just imagine the internal sigh of relief I made!!!
But I'm surprised at the specifically targeted PIs, my understanding from the lab I was in during college is that almost everyone rotates through a few labs after admission and picks their favorite?
the first school was my first traditional interview so I could have **** the bed and they wanted to make sure I knew.
