<p>Hi all,
sorry this post seems scatter brained. I am just working on.trying to figure out graduate school. I am a junior majoring in biomedical engineer at duke with a certificate in neuroscience. i love neuroscience but am worried in a normal neuroscience program my engineering skills will beccome obsolete. I also wwondered if any biommedical engineering appproaches to AIDS research are being pursued. I haven't taken GREs yet but grrades have been respectable so I would prefer recommendations based on my interest of neuroscience in conjunction with biomedical engineering research. I plan to pursue a PhD but not an md.</p>
<p>Have you talked to any of your current or past instructors? what do they say?</p>
<p>you need to talk to researchers and departmental faculty (and they could be the same) about what turns you on. Likely you will need to make compromises - you can't always do it all, but you may also find folks doing things up your alley.</p>
<p>I would start locally with faculty at your college, asking them who to talk to.-</p>
<p>I'm afraid there won't be a lot of help on these boards.</p>
<p>There are neuroscience programs that lean heavily towards systems/computational/engineering approaches. You just have to figure out what they are. </p>
<p>MIT's program is pretty systems-oriented, and I know Brandeis is fantastic for computational. CMU computer science, robotics, psych, stats, and BME have a joint interdisciplinary program with UPitt bioeng, neuroscience, math, and psych. University of Florida has a computational neuroengineering lab affiliated with its ECE department. Georgia Tech/Emory have a joint Hybrid Neural Microsystems program, with lucrative fellowships available. If you go overseas, University College London has a great computational neuroscience/machine learning program, EPFL has great neural modeling/neural signal processing/comp neuro (I worked there for a summer), and ETHZ has great neuromorphic engineering.</p>
<p>Also, take a look at the MIT Media Lab. You apply to work with specific faculty in their interdisciplinary PhD program, and the specific faculty largely determine whether you get in. You might be interested in Ed Boyden's Neuroengineering & Neuromedia group. Ed</a> Boyden</p>
<p>I don't know about AIDS research specifically. I hope I was helpful anyway, though. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for advice. I'll continue to be on the lookout for interesting opportunities. People like to write on here that "GRE's can't get you in, but they can keep you out". Say I graduate Duke BME with a 3.8 overall and about the same major GPA, with certificate in neuroscience, minor in psych. What kind of GRE scores would I need for a PhD program in say the media lab at MIT, neuroscience UCSD, BME/Neuroscience CMU/Pitt. Any range of ideas? I don't know how much time I'm going to prepare - and not sure for my selections people will put much weight on GRE vocabulary score..</p>
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People like to write on here that "GRE's can't get you in, but they can keep you out".
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<p>They're right.</p>
<p>GRE importance and expectations will vary from program to program. The Media Lab does not require the GRE. CMU, from what I understand, tends to downplay it (though that might just be their computer science department). For other schools, having a score which is within their norm (which you can look up) will be crucial. The mean or median scores for different programs probably exist somewhere online.</p>
<p>A 3.8 from a strong school should be sufficient for any grad program in the sciences. Grades are another thing that can keep you out but won't get you in.</p>
<p>thanks a lot. can you tell me where I can look up GRE scores ?</p>
<p>Most schools don't publish their average GRE scores, but occasionally you will come across a graduate department that will give average GRE scores of accepted applicants on their program's website. You will just need to look around. UCSD neuroscience published 615 verbal, 760 quantitative, and 5.0 analytical writing as its average score (<a href="http://neurograd.ucsd.edu/admissions/faqs.html)%5B/url%5D">http://neurograd.ucsd.edu/admissions/faqs.html)</a>.</p>
<p>As for the GRE itself, I would focus on getting a 780-800 (800 preferably) on the quantitative section, and just shoot for ~600 (+/- 50) on verbal. Your verbal score is more of just a pass/fail item, I don't think a school would value you more with an 800 on verbal as opposed to a 600; however, if you get a 400 that might set off some sirens.</p>
<p>people who i trust have told me that as long as you have over a 70% on all of the sections, no flags go off. People with less than a 70% routinely get into graduate school, their apps just get a bit more attention. You definitely want over a 700 on the quantitative.</p>
<p>You may have a easier time finding a neuroscience program that fits you if you can narrow down your interests - central or peripheral nervous system, diseases that affect the nervous system, injury to the nervous system. Your engineering background will be used in a group that focuses on neuroprosthetics or treating disease/injury with new technology.</p>
<p>I am planning to study brain-computer interfacing in graduate school, focusing on the motor system (making a brain-controlled prosthetic arm for instance). I chose a few Neurobiology programs to apply to, but only ones that were very focused on technology (ie UPitt). The rest of the programs I applied to were biomedical engineering programs with a focus on the nervous system and that had professors doing research I am specifically interested in (ie Arizona State U). There are also a lot of interdisciplinary programs popping up in neuroscience and engineering that might be what you're looking for.</p>
<p>hey all,
im just wondering does a ph.d. wannabe (in his/her undergrad) have to know THAT much about what one wants to do in their ph.d. program?
can one just be very interested in research in, say, biomedical engineering or neuroscience (and still get into a top caliber program)??
basically what i am asking is, that is one's strong interest in a specialized topic required for a top ph.d. program??</p>
<p>noface,</p>
<p>It's okay if the reality is that you are interested in many topics in neuroscience, but it's probably not okay to present yourself that way. You need to demonstrate that you understand the specific merits of the problems and approaches used by a few of the profs at each school. If you know exactly what problem/approach you want to use in grad school, your life will be easy because you can write one main essay, find profs/schools that match, and basically just change the names in the essay for each school.</p>
<p>However, if you can see yourself working on a lot of different problems, you will have to use a different method. I suggest figuring out which labs have the most interesting projects at each school. This will take a very long time, but it's a prerequisite for showing that you have given deep thought to how you would spend your time at that particular school. Then, for each school, justify in your SoP why what your chosen lab studies is so interesting and important. Talk about how your background prepares you to work on that problem. Take your time with that, because professors can smell ignorance, na</p>
<p>There are also a lot of interdisciplinary and umbrella programs, and if you're interested in two fields, or in several closely related topics, you could apply to one of these programs.</p>
<p>I was very agnostic about what I actually wanted to study when I applied to graduate school -- I majored in neuroscience as an undergraduate, but I applied to umbrella molecular/cell biology grad programs, thinking I might want to do something in immunology, or cancer biology, or stick to neuroscience.</p>
<p>This was not a good approach. At some point, you do have to make a decision about what you want to do, and if you go to a large program which allows you to rotate with hundreds of different PIs, you still have to pick one for your thesis. You have to narrow down the possibilities at some point, and I think it's preferable to do the narrowing while you're applying rather than during your first year of graduate school.</p>
<p>MBM,</p>
<p>Your advice is good except for one thing: It is hard for an undergrad to have a good handle on what the interesting fields are, who has a good lab at a particular institution and such. (not to mention future funding prospects etc.) Therefore, I advocate a bit of flexibility going in. (maybe we're saying the same thing two different ways?)</p>
<p>It is good to have some ideas, since those are a prime currency (along with results!) of research, but be open minded and recognize that you don't have the background to know all the answers.</p>
<p>My own experience is a good example. I applied to grad school with an interest in developmental biology (waaaaay back...). Turns out the developmental biologist at the school was not so great, did not have much grad school support etc. Ended up in a molecular virology lab and loved it.</p>
<p>Right, I do think some flexibility is called for, and I know (from personal experience!) that it's difficult to say in advance precisely what one might be interested in. I just think that the earlier the winnowing can begin, the better for the student -- it's hard to come to a large umbrella program and be interested in 25 PIs doing wildly different things and have to choose three for rotations. I would have preferred to be interested in 5 PIs doing similar-but-not-identical things, because being interested in so many PIs feels very unfocused.</p>
<p>Along the lines of NMD and Mollie's discussion, this is one reason why it can be really helpful to work in a research job for a year or two after you graduate. It gives you more time, background, and resources to answer these questions.</p>
<p>I happen to know that Mollie had an outstanding app despite her initial lack of narrowing down, (we know each other in real life), and was able to get into top programs. But for a less outstanding applicant, a serious lack of narrowing down can make you look unfocused and not ready for a PhD program.</p>
<p>Could anyone suggest me a good graduate interdisciplinary program in neurosciences for someone with a business/economics background?</p>
<p>stormharmony, it's more efficient to create your own post. Please do so. Others, thanks for your input. I currently do BMI(brain machine interface or brain computer interface) research at Duke. I enjoy it but don't want to limit myself to one field so early in my career. I think I may have been a little unclear as to my background. I have worked in a BMI(brain machine interface) lab for two years, and worked one summer in the uPitt neuroscience program, so I would not consider myself a stranger to lab work. This summer, hopefully I'll be working on medical devices in Africa - although that's not likely to give me any real graduate school direction. It seems as most agree that approaching each school with a well defined interest is imperative - which is logical. However, do you think it's acceptable to apply to a variety of schools with a fairly different interest in each one(i.e. one for neural prosthetics, one for neuro afflictions, etc)? thanks for your time and advice
Ben</p>
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It seems as most agree that approaching each school with a well defined interest is imperative - which is logical. However, do you think it's acceptable to apply to a variety of schools with a fairly different interest in each one(i.e. one for neural prosthetics, one for neuro afflictions, etc)?
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<p>Yes and yes.</p>