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Grad School Interview
histronic
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi all,
As the thread title suggests, I have a graduate school interview coming up and I couldn't be more nervous. Does anyone have any advice for this - what kind of questions will they be asking, what kind of questions should I ask, what can I expect, etc? It is for the biochemistry department.
Thanks!
As the thread title suggests, I have a graduate school interview coming up and I couldn't be more nervous. Does anyone have any advice for this - what kind of questions will they be asking, what kind of questions should I ask, what can I expect, etc? It is for the biochemistry department.
Thanks!
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1) Look up whoever you are going to be interviewing with. They most likely have a school affiliated website somewhere that gives you a general idea of what they do research on. You should have a very very basic understanding of what they do, and you should come up with a few questions about their research.
2) Try and decide on some particular topic that you are interested in with each interviewer (a topic that relates to their field). This is basically the same as the previous point, but I wanted to reiterate, that they will probably ask you what interests you. It's good to have something in mind before they ask. Even better if you can tie that thing in with previous stuff you have worked on, and give a really good explanation about why it interests you. It doesn't always have to directly relate to the interview, it can be a general biochemistry topic, but the more you can relate it to their field the better.
3) Make a list of all the research type projects that you've worked on, and memorize a few key details. It's good to have specific examples of things you have done to bring up during the interview. Don't force it if it never comes up, but usually it's pretty easy and worthwhile to say something like "Oh yeah, I worked on something similar as an undergrad, we were looking at X, Y, and Z".
4) For your own benefit, I would ask each professor where their previous grad students have gone. It's good to know which professors have good industry contacts, which ones have good academic contacts, and which ones seem like they are just starting out.
There's probably more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
It depends a lot on the school & department, as there's basically three types of 'grad school interviews': 1) A real interview (i.e., they're planning on only accepting some smallish percent of interviewees), 2) What I'll call a "safety" interview (they'll probably accept 75%+, they just want to make sure that the people they accept are actually as good as their paperwork suggests and aren't crazy / terrible at personal interactions / etc), and 3) Some schools will have already accepted based only on the written applications and then invite people more for a 'visit' than an actual interview process (though you still usually meet 1 on 1 with faculty and go through the same basic process). I'm assuming it's not the 3rd based on your post.
@jebus314 has pretty good general advice up there; I quite honestly didn't do (1) at all (other than the tiny bios they included in the interview packet we got on arrival), which I don't really recommend unless you're very good (i.e., basically doing research at a grad student level already). I wouldn't say go crazy memorizing their last 5 papers, but it really is a good idea to get a general picture of who's in the department and (especially the people you're interviewing with) what they're working on.
HOWEVER, don't go overboard with this. In my experience, it's MUCH MUCH better to go into an interview with the attitude of "this is a really interesting field but I don't really know much about it", let the faculty talk to you about their stuff (faculty love to go on and on about their research), and just ask good questions. The worst thing is to go into an interview with the attitude of "I know everything there is to know about this field", because a) they love to argue, and b) they're almost certainly going to know things that you don't (even if it's obscure papers from 20 years ago). You want them to leave the interview thinking "that student was able to step into a field they're not an expert in, think about the work that's going on in that field, and come up with good ideas", not "that person is a know-it-all who sounded like an idiot when they disagreed with me on something".
(also, (c), you can make stupid mistakes - my PI loves to tell a story about how someone came in going "I read all your papers and loved your work on blah blah" and after like 5 minutes of going on he realized that the student had read papers by a different faculty member with the same first initial and last name)
Also, jebus's (3) is a huge thing - if you've done research (and written about it in your application), they're definitely going to ask you about it. Make sure you can talk about your research in an intelligent manner - i.e., not "I did this... why did you do this... because my PI/postdoc said to", but why it was interesting to do, what you did, and (most critically) why you did those experiments and what the results meant. Again, it depends on what school you're applying to (and thus how competitive it is / what kind of students they're looking for), but if you can show them that you're basically already able to converse about your research like you're a grad student already, it's a significant leg up over people who were just doing what other people told them to.
I don't know anything specific to biochem, but I've had a decent amount of experience with the genetics dept interview process where I did my PhD if you have any specific questions
1) Be interesting to talk to.
2) Immediately start talking about research ideas, rather than your credentials and/or positions.
3) Ask a poignant question about their work.
They're ultimately taking a bet on you, but they like to know you at least won't be an unpleasant/boring person to interact with. The more interesting the conversation you have, the better your interview will go. You can't really fake being interesting, but looking over their research ahead of time can you give you more ideas for good conversation topics. Don't overthink it too much; leave room to think on your feet during the interview (i.e., have a fluid conversation rather than reading off a grocery list of thoughts.)
@Gdiguy It actually seems kind of like interview option 3 you stated; they are giving us breakfast, lunch, and dinner and touring us around the labs and showing us the research equipment. I have 5 interviews with different professors, 30 minutes each. I am just worried about sounding like an idiot, but all the advice here has helped a lot and given me ideas on what to talk about.
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I didn't necessarily mean that - all 3 of those options they'll already have it significantly narrowed down to only a small number of people (since they're having to spend money to invite you / feed you / etc)... any way it's done, it's always half about interviewing to decide who to admit, and half trying to win you over so that if they accept you you'll come (because most of these programs tend to be on the smaller side, they don't want to accept a ton of people and then have 2x as many as they expect show up, but they also don't want to accept too few and not have a good sized class
Good luck