<p>Hello, I'm a rising senior in college, and I'm just starting to look into grad school. I know almost nothing about it, and neither do my parents, so I'm coming here with some general questions I'm hoping you can help me out with to get me started.</p>
<p>I'm a student at Northwestern majoring in biology (concentration of genetics and molecular biology). My GPA is currently 3.477, which I know isn't stellar. I'm hoping to pull it back above 3.5 this year. My ultimate goal is to go into cancer research, which I will most likely need a Ph.D. to do.</p>
<p>I'm a little hesitant to apply to graduate school right out of college, though. I know that grad school (particularly Ph.D. programs) is a significant investment of time and money, and not the kind of thing you should jump into if you're not 100% sure that it's what you want. My mom is pushing me to go straight into grad school, but I'd like to take a few years off after undergrad to get a job, save up some money, gain some experience, and really make sure that I want to commit to a Ph.D. program.</p>
<p>However, my mom is worried that if I get a job and start earning money, I'll never go back to school. Is it advisable to take a few years off between undergrad and grad school? Do graduate schools prefer students who just graduated? Is it terribly difficult to quit a job and go back to school?</p>
<p>Also, on a side note, I may not have a choice on this if I want to get into a good program. Aside from some independent research my sophomore year, I have no research/internship experience, so I think that, whether I wanted to or not, I would probably have to find some kind of research job before I apply to grad school. Thoughts on this?</p>
<p>And one more random question: in undergrad, if I received grades that were low, but still high enough that they count towards my major in classes that are very relevant to my major, would it be advisable to re-take them and earn higher grades so that graduate schools could see that I am capable of doing better in those classes? I decided on the biology major kind of late, which meant that I had to take several difficult science classes at once, which did not leave me with good grades in those classes (mostly B-'s and a couple C's). I think that I would do much better in these classes the second time around. My sophomore year, I withdrew from an introductory physics course because I was getting a C/D, and last year, I re-took it and got a solid A. I think I could get similar results if I re-took some of the other science classes. Would it kind of make up for getting mediocre grades the first time around if I re-took the classes and got good grades, or would it just look pathetic?</p>
<p>Thank you so much for any advice. I know that was a long post. I just kind of don't have anyone else to ask about this stuff, and I'm feeling overwhelmed about the whole process.</p>