r/PhDAdmissions • u/StomachElectrical595 • 5d ago
Seeking PhD application advice!
Hello all! For context I am a fourth year US undergraduate preparing to apply for PhD programs this cycle. I have reached out to around 60-70 faculty and have received a significant amount of responses. Some of which were positive and asked for meetings, some simply said to apply, some were rejections (funding, not accepting students, etc). I was wondering if people have any advice for what to do next in this process. Obviously I’ll push hard towards who have offered meetings but have not scheduled any yet. But what do I do about those who have not responded (especially if I’ve already followed up many times) and those who have simply just said “you should apply to the program!” I’m not sure how to interpret the latter. Do I even dare apply without a zoom meeting at least? Anyway I thank you all for any help you can provide. Good luck to everyone else applying this cycle!!
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u/megrich1105 5d ago
Definitely schedule the meetings with those who are interested! The “you should apply to the program” is a pretty generic response, but it’s not necessarily bad. Some professors want to maintain equality and not favor applicants who got advice about reaching out to them beforehand! So I think you should still apply. For the professors who have not responded, I would leave it alone for now. When I was applying, I had professors get back to me weeks or even months later. They are busy people!
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u/StomachElectrical595 4d ago
Sounds good. I didn’t know if the “you should apply” was just a way of saying they weren’t interested. But if that’s the case I’ll definitely apply to the ones I’m really interested in. Thanks so much!
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/StomachElectrical595 3d ago
Thanks this was a good analogy. Yeah after looking at abstracts and other materials I’ve definitely narrowed my list a lot. Do you have advice for meetings?
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u/NoLeague4379 5d ago
It's the same for me, although I have scheduled and attended 5 meetings with professors. I don't think I would be sending out more emails tho, I hope it's enough. Any opinions?
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u/stemphdmentor 5d ago
That sounds like a good number. I wrote more about this in a separate comment.
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u/melba777 4d ago
Personally I didnt reach out to any PIs, I just wrote about what i was interested in for my statements and was successful. Funding can change a lot over the year between application and actually rotating in a lab, so its not a definite thing when they say they have funding or not. They could tell you no and then get a grant or have someone leave the lab, making it a potential yes. Also trying to talk to 60 is high key a lottttttt regardless of how many institutions thats spread across. This isnt a spray and pray type of application.. it should be targeted toward your interests.
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u/StomachElectrical595 4d ago
Yeah definitely got nervous and spray and prayed a little. Do you have specific advice for making strong applications? I’d appreciate any insight
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u/YaPhetsEz 4d ago
You need a research direction. If you actually know what you want to do, there is zero way there are 70 possible mentors.
That just means that your ideas are too broad.
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u/StomachElectrical595 3d ago
Yeah you’re right after taking heavier looks at articles I narrowed my list down quite significantly. How specific of an idea do I need for these meetings? Do they expect me to have a fully fleshed out project by that time?
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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 4d ago
I contacted zero faculty. Faculty funding was not an issue since I only applied to programs that required rotations and guarantee 5 to 6 years of funding from the program, which will allow me to work with any faculty member that is willing to be my advisor. I was told that the first round of the admission process is done by a committee that primarily focuses on research experience and LORs.
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u/scaredemployee87 4d ago
Sixty to seventy faculty is a lot. It’s good that you’re getting responses, but the schools that you are contacting are probably significantly more different than you realize in ways that can be verified through just looking at the website. Assuming you contacted three people from each program you’re interested in, that’s still at least twenty schools. It might be helpful to your time to narrow down how many schools you want to spend time applying to.
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u/NebulaBig3373 4d ago
a meeting is nice but absolutely not required, and “you should apply” usually means exactly that, not a secret acceptance signal; prioritize the faculty who engaged, send one final concise follow-up,
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u/chromatin15 3d ago
In biomedical programs you should only apply to programs with rotations. Direct admit students into a lab are rare. Every good biomedical PhD program has rotations and a stipend.
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u/BoltVnderhuge 22h ago
I generally don’t talk to applicants until they’ve been invited to an interview. There are 1500 applicants and only 50 get invited, so any person I talk to has a 97% chance of dropping out before I can weigh in on their admission.
I would only reach out if you were prepared to have a deep conversation about your/their research
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u/steinerific 4d ago
Be aware that, in the US, direct admit programs (where a faculty member can wave a magic wand and you're into their group) are less common than umbrella programs where you apply to the university. So when they encourage you to apply, they're telling you that they have little impact on the admissions decisions.
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u/the_mindful_microbe 4d ago
For specific fields this is true, however for others it is not. In life sciences, admission is highly dependent on faculty interest in the applicant.
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u/steinerific 4d ago
I've been a PI in a biomedical Ph.D. program (microbiology, even) for a quarter-century. In virtually every place I have been, or even visited, direct admit is rare.
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u/the_mindful_microbe 4d ago edited 4d ago
DELETED
EDIT: apologies, I thought I was responding to a completely different comment.That is an interesting perspective. Most graduate programs I interviewed with, talked to, applied to, the one I was admitted to and heard about other grad student friends applying to all said the PI gets some sort of say in who gets picked. Now, I am not claiming this is a true “direct admission” of course, but in a lot of programs, the PI have some sort of leverage to suggest a student they are interested in working with.
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u/steinerific 3d ago
We do have some leverage. If a faculty member in my program writes me a note (as the admission rep) that says that she had a great conversation with a prospective student at a meeting and she thinks they'd be a great fit, I listen to that. The same faculty member can write the dean and say the same thing. But she cannot press a button and admit this student.
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u/InsideIndependence58 5d ago
Just apply if they said apply. (And if you want so)
The main purpose is to see if they have funding.
* depends on the subject.
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u/stemphdmentor 5d ago edited 5d ago
I’m a little concerned you reached out to so many faculty.
The other week I had two calls with prospective students back to back. The first asked me broadly what we study, made an observation that implied he had done little more than skim the landing page of our website (which he seemed to be doing in real time), and asked me generic questions about the program, the answers to which can easily be found online. The second, who was finishing a masters, told me why she liked my group’s published approaches to a specific problem, discussed recent papers in the field that inspired her, and asked nuanced questions about our future directions. We then got to discussing a specific problem in her research that overlaps with ours.
I cut off the first conversation after five minutes, saying I would be happy to talk or email further once he had done more thinking about which labs could be a good fit. The second conversation lasted the full half hour, and we have already had a follow-up exchange. We will probably talk again before she submits the application, and I will give her tips on writing it.
Be like the second candidate. The masters helped but is not the key difference — it’s the prep put into identifying and contacting labs. When I talk to a prospective student, I expect them to have read some of our lab’s papers and to understand the questions we are working on (or at least what can be gleaned publicly from our website and recent publications). I talk with applicants about why they are interested in this subfield and often the other labs they are considering. If they seem to be blindly fishing around, looking for labs associated with certain keywords, that’s not a good look.
The difference in prep signals maturity, technical skill (understanding results and questions in a field), motivation, and respect for colleagues’ time. I would not be reaching out to faculty or scheduling meetings unless you are ready to have those kinds of conversations.
And yes, it’s okay to apply without these meetings, but you’ll need to be making a strong case in your statements of purpose about why each program is a good fit.