So I had my interview, and I was told they did smaller group interviews for the OTD program. It was great because it felt intimate, and I felt like I was on a team on the interview (so I hope we can make it in together!) I was told they're planning on keeping a total class of 75 (like last year?) but a class of 20 for the OTD. Our first year will mostly be with the other OT programs, but it's exciting to be in a smaller cohort!
Also, they do have had grad assistantships at 14 an hour coming out of work study. It looked to be about half of students were on some form of work study, which was good.
Oh, and in neuro, I was told we get to look at actual human brains! Not to be creepy, but I was excited to hear about that! Ive only looked at rat and sheep brains. We won't be doing a lot with cadavers, though, in anatomy. :/ We get to "tour" the lab once, though. On the tour, my guide mentioned that although many of the faculty are greatly respected in their field of research, they all act like normal people. I think that's probably more common in a helping professional field than say, academia.
The brochure mentioned that only 15% of students were from far away (so past NY and Delaware). It'll be weird for me, but I loved Philly. I'd say it's like a cheaper Boston with streets gridded like NY! Yeah, I did see some building decay, but it looked to me like a lot of it was being worked on. The terminal market was lovely and it finally felt like Christmas for a moment. 😉 And Chinatown was nice...too bad we couldn't finish more than half our bowl of ramen...
So I know I only hit a few points, but I think I've babbled for long enough! Needless to say, I hope that despite my nerves, they saw that I'd fit in nicely to their program! Good luck to others who interview!
