Price of Submission
A sunny Sunday might not be the ideal moment to fill some official papers for my official enrolment at Imperial College: 22 degrees and a cloudless sky are an inviting opportunity for an afternoon spent lying in the sun with a beer and a nice book.
I must admit while typing these words I’m thoroughly considering this as an excellent solution, but before eventually heading for a park with a can of Guinness and, why not, the forms I received from Imperial, I want to write a remarkably (hopefully) personal and, at the same time, useful post about Oxbridge and their application procedure systems.
Let’s start from the end: to apply for the position I managed to get all I had to do was to send an email to my (at that time) potential supervisor, with a copy of my CV and the name of at least two academic referees. He invited me to London for a formal interview, at the end of which I was already offered the job. The MRC (Medical Research Council) provided me with two nights accommodation at a lovely and incredibly homely guest house in Hammersmith, plus all my travel expenses were paid back.
Then, I received forms from the MRC itself, followed by those from Imperial and, finally, Leukaemia Research, which is the organization actually financing my project.
Back in December, I applied for a couple of projects at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which, as my future employer (CSC) is part of Imperial College, is formally a part of the university of Cambridge. Therefore, you need to submit two, separated applications: one to the LMB and the other to the “host” university.
Whereas the former, perhaps due to the fact that this is another MRC-based organization, was for free and, once invited for the interviews, both accommodation and travel expenses got reimbursed, the on-line application to the university cost £25. What’s more, outdated as it may sound, I had to (quickly) send a paper copy of all the papers and forms I had already electronically sent to them through the post: this means I had to ask my refs not only to send their reference letters via email, but also to print them out, put 3 (!) copies in a sealed envelop (together with 3 copies of other documents I had to fill in and make them sign). Those envelops had to be ridiculously signed on the outside, just across the seal, and the signature was to be protected with a bit of sticky tape. All these complicated procedures were meant to prevent anyone (me?) from forging the precious content and to keep it secret to me (ha ha ha!).
However, unlike my interview at LMB, I have no photograph of Oxford to show you as my interview was over the phone. I know this is not that unusual, but it still sounds idiotic to me (and I really do mean that!).
Even more infuriating was their timing. On leaving Addenbrooke’s, I was told a final decision would have been taken shortly and, whatever the outcome, they would have contacted me no later than a certain day (two weeks time, to be precise): I was told the result one before the deadline.
It took Oxford (dep. of biochemistry) more than a month to come up with an answer: by that time (interview on February 29, no news until April 3), I had already gone through my interview at Imperial, accepted it and submitted all the official papers to the MRC. To make things worse, after my phone interview (which doesn’t really give you any opportunity to know anything about the group and place you might join) I was told they would have informed me “at least within a week”.
Therefore, I can already tell you The Euchromatic Blog will be hypercritical to Oxford University.
It’s important, anyhow, to make absolutely clear that the position I’ve got is, by a large margin, the best one from many points of view (the only drawback is that I’d have liked to live in small, peaceful and full-of-students Cambridge rather than in a huge city such as London). I applied to LMB mostly because of its fame and then turned to Oxford and Imperial for opposite reasons: the former to try both sides of Oxbridge, the latter because of the project itself. In fact, I haven’t talked about the other successful applications I turned down because fortunately already with a gorgeous project in my hands (which means I won't go to Switzerland...).
Applications in hard copy are not so rare - ever tried to apply for a researcher position at CNR (as if there were positions available, AHAHAHAH)? I did. - what I found funny is that you had to pay to apply, I had never heard of that before. You still may consider Switzerland for a post-doc or a job, cities are nice, wages are very good and big pharma is at home there, which is why I am very excited about my job interview in Basel in three weeks...