Lately, I've been receiving application results from my graduate program applications for my master's programs in bioinformatics and biomedical engineering. I am lucky enough to be admitted into graduate programs at Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, and ETH Zurich. Here are some key takeaways from the tedious application process, I'll try my best to be less cliche: 1. Keep your application organized. I used a notion table to organize the file, timeline, and checklists for all the programs I applied to so that I can keep my mind clear of the status of my applications. Check out this article for some templates; 2. Leave time for research. The most time-consuming part of the application is actually choosing the best programs and supervisors for you. Start early on navigating through university websites and lab pages for the topics/programs of your interests; 3. Use forums wisely. Forums such as GradCafe and college confidential can be useful in providing some scholarship/program database. But bear in mind every year situation changes and doesn't be obsessed browsing through those forums as it may heighten your anxiety; 4. Logic and Story. For personal statements/SoP, tell a story of clear logic is the strategy I choose for my application. Though it may vary from program to program, showing your professionalism and tailoring your writing to the program generally help. Also, short sentences can be powerful. I'd love to hear about your stories and tips for applying for grad schools (Masters, Ph.D., MD, etc). We may also have a panel talk on grad school applications in the future. Before that, Laidlaw hosted a panel talk before on this topic, check it out if you're interested.

Some recent news I've come through about dream research Scientists are able to communicate with people in their lucid dreams. Recently scientists conducted a series of experiments to ask candidate simple math questions when they are lucid dreaming (dreaming while being aware of dreaming). And their answers, in the form of particular eye movements, are recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Among the 158 candidates, around 18% give the right answers. This can potentially open the door for people to understand how brain functions in dreams. New algorithm to tell patterns in dreams. Recently scientists have developed a new algorithm, based on the publicly accessible dream-report database, to tell the mental well-being of the candidate. By breaking and categorizing words appeared in the dreams, scientists have developed a automated program to analyze a series of mental health factors, including average aggression, positive to negative emotion ratio, etc. And the results matched up 76% of the time. Sounds interesting? Should I make a post about dream research? Let me know!

Hi fellows I want to start this thread to discuss how to get good grades for college/coursework. For medical students and premed students, GPA is nonetheless one of the most essential assessment criteria. If you have any thoughts/experiences on getting good grades/nailing exams or simply efficient learning in general, feel free to share it here. I personally found the advice from Youtuber Ali Abdaal quite helpful. The two strategies he suggested, active recall and spaced repetition, works quite well for bio-related courses. Active recall emphasis encouraging you to recall the material from your memory as opposed to passive-review of content, and spatial repetition help you to keep record and store the knowledge in long-term memory. Check out his video for details! Any other thoughts on GPA and grades? feel free to comment here. :)

Hi beautiful fellows, As the monthly theme released on clinical robotics, we are looking forward to hearing about your thoughts on the topic. We will hold a (causal) webinar to talk about this topic on Saturday, Jan 30th at 08:30 AM EST / 02:30 PM BST / 09:30 PM HKT. Feel free to join us and enjoy some cyber snacks while talking about those robotic shape medical machines which will eventually overrule human governance in the future.  Here's the link for the webinar:  ⁨⁨https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/88135024283⁩ Hope to see you this Saturday! Till then, my friend, stay safe.  Jieran