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2023.jan.11 - Mayo Interviews

Yesterday was interview day! I interviewed for Mayo's Biomedical Engineering and Physiology (BMEP) PhD track. I received the interview notice a little after halfway through December and in preparation for this interview, I read a couple books, a handful of blogs on the perspective of the interviewee. I think the books were a bit of an overkill, but reading more books anyways is a part of my new years resolution so I did it. During my time sleuthing around for Mayo-specific interview information for the MCGSBS program, I found almost nothing, not even on Reddit. This is either a red or green flag that people at Mayo don't use Reddit. The one thing I did find was a question around ten years back on GlassDoors on one of the questions an interviewer gave.

I'm not aiming to give advice with this post, but to primarily fill in that gap on the internet on the Mayo-day-interview process, memorialize my own experiences (afterall this is my blog). Additionally, if it's even more help, I have listed the books and blogs I've read to prepare myself at the very end of this post. . I will keep this post updated on what the ultimate verdict is!

Now onto interview day itself.

Interview Day

8:15am - 8:30am [Getting Connected]
15 minutes of silence.

8:30am - 8:45am [Welcome]
These are 15 minutes lost to history -- I don't remember what exactly was said here, but it was nice to see the faculty talking among themselves and joking. Gives me hope that these professionals have some humanity and fun.

8:45am - 9:15am [School and Program Overview]
The dean of the graduate school went over things I'm sure we all (the interviewees) already knew. Yes there are three campuses, there is the shield trinity of patient care, education, and research. I did find out our exact stipend, $38,434 per year with health insurance benefits and a new laptop.

9:15am - 9:45am [Meet your Track Leadership]
The dean of the biomedical engineering and physiology track emphasized that there are no barriers to collaboration. This really stuck with me. How he described it was that for all the other graduate schools/medical research institutions they all claim their emphasis on translational reseach, their willingness and eagerness for, and maybe that there's some pipeline or means they've done to reduce the barrier for that kind of work; but at Mayo, this 'reducing the barrier' is not even a issue worth bringing up. Also emphasized that we were really free to turn off our cameras during Break and that was immensefully helpful.

9:45am - 10:00am [Break]

10:00am - 10:30am [Interview #1]
I came into the interview very nervous, and it didn't help that my pained stomach and clammy feet were there to remind me. He was a really nice guy and smiled alot. The smiling really calmed me. His first question was the classic "Tell me more about yourself," and I happily obliged. It helped that my first experience interviewing for grad school was on zoom, so I had my whole spiel in the background with key words and events bolded. I think it went well. He asked me what I thought a mathematical model was i.e. to expand on what I said was an interest topic of mine. Which makes perfect sense because it's not an exaggeration to say that models are everything in science. I forget my exact response, but I seemed to make sense. In all of these interview sessions, I dreaded the "do you have any questions for me?" portion. I made a list of possible questions to ask interviewers and had that document up, but as I was rapidly skimming through them again while Dr. Interviewer_1 was talking, I found that there were all useless and dumb. I got through by pointing out that Dr. Interviewer_1 was at Mayo for his PhD and PostDoc, so I asked something along the lines of "What made you stay at Mayo, and how have you seen Mayo change for the better and for the worse?" It was a success. I would later play this card again for Dr. Interviewer_4. The 30 minutes actually flew by and it was time for a break.
>> Tip No. 1: Keep tissues near you.
I was also recovering from a cold, so I was so grateful for my foresight in placing a tissue box on my desk. For in-person interviews, I'm going to have to remember to bring suffiicent hand tissues. You never know when you need one.

10:30am - 10:45am [Break]

10:45am - 11:15am [Interview #2]
I was notified during the "Meet your Track Leadership" session that my original interviewer ran into flight difficulties and could not make it to this session, so they were going to find another faculty member to stand in for him. There goes the time I put into looking into the background and previous publications of the original interviewer, but by the end of the session, I found that this was a blessing in disguise. What did go through my mind was in the "Knock 'em Dead" book, they said to expect two kinds of interviewers, the trained and untrained ones. At the very least, my new game plan was to get Dr. Interviewer_2 to talk about his research and wing the conversation from there.

Roughly the interview was again "Tell me more about yourself," and I also expanded on my research. Since Dr. Interviewer_2 came from an entirely different field, I was tasked with framing magnetic resonance fingerprinting in as simple of a picture as possible. I was later complimented on the clarity of my explanation.
>> Tip No. 2: Prepare an explanation of your work and the related phenomena in a way that any educated nonspecialist would understand
This turned out to be my favorite session. I learned that babies have very damped circadian rhythms, and that circadian rhythms are encoded in our genes. I had one question that immensely impressed Dr. Interviewer_2 about his research, and I'm thankful that Dr. Interviewer_2 very explicitly said at the very end that I would be a perfect fit at Mayo and that I should be accepted for the second round of interviews.

11:15am - 11:30am [Break]
I took this time to get lunch and continued eating through the next session.

11:30am - 12:00pm [Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in MCGSBS]
At my lunch during this time while listening.

12:00pm - 1:00pm [Break - Luncheon]
I intentionally ate my lunch earlier than the prealloted lunch time because I wanted to take this hour for myself. I spent this time relaxing and playing Genshin TCG.

1:00pm - 1:30pm [Interview #3]
This was the most interview-esque interview session I had today. I was asked three questions: I relaxed too much during lunch, this was my weakest show in talking and expanding on my answers. And I quickly realized that I didn't mention charity for the third question. That says something about myself I think. Or really, what I omitted from my answer. In my defense, (this is me making excuses) the people who's first thought is donating to charity are people who are already in a well-off position finantially, or people who are working in a related social service sector. I'll let the cat out of the bag and say that my own response was something along the lines of "I'll invest in my own projects." My next thought (but didn't say) was that I'd invest in other researchers.

The conversation afterwards became an actual conversation, where we just talked about inclusion, disproportionate diversity in leadership, and how to do better in activism. This session wasn't phenomenal in my opinion, but I do remember Dr. Interviewer_3 commenting that I was a very good explainer (with regards to my research) and that I was pleasant to talk to.

1:30pm - 1:45pm [Break]

1:45pm - 2:15pm [Interview #4]
This was a absolute W of a session.
Dr. Interviewer_4 from the get go told me we were going to go through my introductions, rush through his introductions so we could save more time for the fun questions/conversation portion of the session. He told me to answer three questions and said them all at once: (i.e. tell me your whole life's story.) I was so thankful towards myself for writing down the three questions as he was listing them out, because what happened in the next few minutes was extraordinary. Do you know the feeling when you leave a performance, and you know that you did something extraordinary? This was one of those times. Afterwards Dr. Interviewer_4 told me about his own work and we had a fun conversation about data science algorithms. Even though time flew by, we reached a point in the session where there was five more minutes and I didn't have any more questions to ask, and the conversation stilled. Thankfully Dr. Interviewer_4 assured me I didn't have to ask more questions and proposed that our next step is for me to come in-person for the next interview stage. That was very nice of him to say that. So we ended our call a bit early.

2:15pm - 2:30pm [Break]
Relished in my victory and did a victory tweet.

2:30pm - 3:00pm [Interview #5]
This session was just awkward but I'd say that it's pretty mid. Dr. Interviewer_5 knows one of my PIs and said he'll keep an eye out for my poster at the SPIE medical imaging conference. He seemed to like my research.

3:00pm - 3:15pm [Break]

3:15pm - 3:45pm [Interview #6]
This session too was not so hot. I don't rermember anything good things that happened here other than getting a vague sense that Dr. Interviewer_6 thinks that I'm not a good fit. He did go on about the education reforms that'll take place soon. I did out myself that I have no biology experience (although biology is one of the prerequesite courses for this program). Apparently the tentative current plan is for me to take an online course before classes start (if I get into Mayo of course).

3:45pm - 4:15pm [Closing Remarks, Q & A]
I personally had no questions.

4:15pm - 5:00pm [Break]
I live in EST, so for me, this was a good enough time to eat dinner.

5:00pm - 7:00pm [Virtual Student Happy Hour]
Could have skipped it.

Resources

The books I read were:
The blogs I consulted: