It’s Valentine’s day and I just got back from my second grad school visit to the MIT Biology PhD program. It has been so much fun to meet incredible faculty, graduate students, and recruits at my visits so far, but I am definitely ready to take a break from traveling for a couple of weeks and take some time to reflect.

So here are a few preliminary thoughts on my visits so far – to MIT and the Harvard Immunology PhD program:

Visit Weekend Structure:

• Harvard’s visit was simply exhausting. We were always doing something, and had lots of chances to interact with faculty. It felt great at the time but in retrospect I think I would have liked a little more free time to digest things
• On the other hand, there were a couple of times during the MIT Bio weekend where we had too much time! Squeezing in a nap was great, but that time might have been better spent with faculty, who I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked

Graduate Student Interactions:

• Harvard: since the program was so specific, we all had a lot in common and got really excited during our conversations! After leaving, though, I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing – being challenged to think outside of the box is important to me and I started wondering if this PhD program was a bit narrow for my interests
  • One thing that I loved about the grad students (and faculty) was there were a lot of Europeans and students with non-scientific interests!
• MIT: lived up to some of the stereotypes. Generally, the students seemed a bit more ‘nerdy’ than the Harvard students. It was refreshing to just geek out about things that most people wouldn’t really care about. Since the Biology program is so broad, I also learned a lot of interesting things about model organisms (like planaria, which can regenerate from a piece 1/300th of original size! Video) and other research areas that I didn’t know much about
  • All of the graduate students seemed really enthusiastic to meet the prospectives; in fact, at times I felt that the grad student to prospective ratio was a bit too high!

Faculty Interactions:

• Harvard: the faculty seemed really invested in the students, spending a lot of time with us throughout the weekend. Several of the professors also remembered specific details about my application, leading to some interesting conversations. Although I think other students had different experiences, one disappointment for me was that none of our chats sparked really interesting research ideas
• MIT: I wish that we had gotten the chance to interact with faculty more, but I loved the interactions I had! Like the grad students, I felt that the faculty were more open to getting a little ‘geeky’ and were super enthusiastic about their research. I was pretty impressed when I met with Rick Young and David Page, two professors whose research I didn’t think I was that interested in, and ended up leaving the interviews really excited about that area

Overall Program:

Both programs were fantastic overall but would likely be best for different people. If you’re certain you want to do immunology (or perhaps a different specific program related to biology), the depth available at Harvard is incredible and you will find many resources to help you succeed. However, MIT biology would be wonderful for someone with broader interests who wants to be inspired by researchers in other disciplines.

So what am I thinking? I think I fall right in the middle of these two programs. I really love immunology and I think I would miss that at MIT (not much immunology research there), but I also love genomics/genetics and wouldn’t totally mind focusing on that during my PhD and then doing a postdoc in immunology. Hoping the next two visits provide some clarity!