<p>Very nice point belevitt ! I totally agree, besides competitive scores for Feinberg are not really high, yet, i think it's a very good graduate school !</p>
<p>serbianguy,</p>
<p>The competitive GRE scores that are listed on the link you posted are for all students applying, not just internationals. The competition for spots at any US school will be significantly more difficult for an international applicant than for an american applicant. Also, if you want to get in to Stanford as an international applicant with no outside funding you will probably need to be awarded a Stanford Graduate Fellowship. The overall acceptance rate for one of their graduate biosciences depts last year was 9/430.</p>
<p>MD Anderson is certainly a good place to do cancer research (I don't know that you would find that many people who would consider it the best place in the US for cancer research right now), but in terms of being admitted to their graduate program, being admitted to Stanford or Harvard (and to a lesser extent UCLA and USC) is significantly more difficult.</p>
<p>Admissions departments are probably going to have to use your GRE scores as a way of evaluating you because they don't know anything about the school you attended abroad. I would strongly suggest giving the GRE another try (you should still have time, right?). Your verbal score is fine (even better considering you are international), however, 660 quantitative is definetly on the very low end of what you would want to be competitive at any well known US biosciences grad school.</p>
<p>Hey all, sounds like a buzzing discussion. Is MD Anderson Cancer Center affiliated with the Texas Medical Center? Is it in anyway related to Baylor college of Medicine or Rice? I can't believe how much science must live in Houston. And is Houston even the premier place for bioscience in Texas?</p>
<p>Virion, I guess I am a little confused about your last comment regarding signing on with a mentor. In all of my exposure, the standard route for grad school is that you do 3-5 rotations in your first year and then choose a mentor who funds you throughout your thesis. Were you saying that you do not need to do rotations if you already have a PI picked out? Is that really wise to sign on to a lab without having worked with the PI before? Is the requiring funding commitments before admission strictly an international applicant requirement? When I attended UW Madison, that certainly wasn't the structure.</p>
<p>Belevitt, MDA is part of the Texas Medical Center, and is affiliated with UT-Houston. I don't think its affiliated with Baylor COM or Rice. The only hospital affiliated with Baylor is Texas Children's. I think Houston has its advantages, definitely a hot spot for cancer research, but UT-Houston itself is a less known school, and I was told the financial package they are offering is not so hot (i.e. you need to pay tuition, etc).</p>
<p>PhD Bound, you might be thinking of a different place, I just did a google search for UT Houston and found it has an identical package to Baylor/Rice
[url=<a href="http://gsbs.uth.tmc.edu/pro_overview.htm%5DGSBS%5B/url">http://gsbs.uth.tmc.edu/pro_overview.htm]GSBS[/url</a>]
Am I confusing this with yet a different Houston school?</p>
<p>serbianguy,</p>
<p>I would compare admissions to Stanford and Harvard to MIT, where they report that the average GRE is: Verbal-88th percentile; Quantitative-87th percentile; and Analytical-90th percentile.
MIT</a> Department of Biology: FAQ</p>
<p>belevitt, "Comparative Biomedical Science" program at UW-Madison says "You must choose and be accepted by a major professor in the Comp Biomed degree program before you can be admitted to the program." About the lab rotation, I will double-check again with the program. UC-Davis' "Comparative Pathology" also have this requirement. Perhaps, it just depends on each program, not all programs at the same university have this requirement.</p>
<p>I also have the same question you brought up. I asked my current PIs and they gave me different opinions. Now I am really hesitating. It seems like I will have to apply to programs that do lab rotation and choose mentors later as I don't have anybody saying they will take new students.</p>
<p>Hi there, </p>
<p>I know that 660 is on the lower end for math, but it would not be any bette even if I repeat the test since I've never been good in math, and 660 is the highest score I achieved on GRE PowerPrep. On the other hand, I hope that 90 percentile on the GRE in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology might mean something to them. Additionally, I speak 5 languages fluently, and for all of them I have worldwide recognized diplomas similar to TOEFL for English. I hope they might find that fact interesting as well. Finally, there are couple of my collegues from University of Belgrade at Stanford and Harvard. My research experience is poor indeed, certaily compared with that of american students, but I have never had a chance to improve it either since even after fall of Slobodan Milosevic Serbia was still an isolated, poor country.
All in all, given these facts, what do you think of my chances now ?</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Dusan</p>
<p>Serbianguy, I think that they will pay close attention to your subject test score since you GPA will be difficult for them to evaluate. I would be shocked if they care beyond a simple passing interest in the fact that you speak multiple languages. It's definitely quite an accomplishment and attests to your intellectual talent, but for the purposes of admissions, I can't believe they would factor that in.</p>
<p>MD Anderson is one of the best cancer hospitals in the world, but I wouldn't exactly say it would be the best place for graduate training. You must first apply to UT-Houston and then get into the MD Anderson program. Their stipend is $26,000 this year. They also admit a TON of students, so it is not very competitive to get in.</p>
<p>serbianguy,</p>
<p>Your GRE is low for Stanford and Harvard, however, there are plenty of other American grad schools that would be much easier for you to get into. Your situation might give you some sympathy with admissions committees. I am not saying that there is zero chance that you might be admitted to one of these schools, I just wanted to point out that the odds of any international student getting into these schools are small (I would estimate somewhere between 0.5-3% admittance rate for international students without their own funding). You might want to look at some schools like UPENN, Baylor College of Medicine, or Rockefeller (much easier to get in here as an international than many other top schools) which are all very good for biomedical research. Hope this is helpful.</p>
<p>Is anybody applying for fellowships concurrently with graduate school apps? Does this happen? Can you propose a line of research that is contingent upon acceptance into a specific program/lab? Do people normally just apply for fellowships during their first year? Any info would be appreciated.</p>
<p>People do apply for fellowships as applicants -- you don't have to complete the line of research you propose for NSF, for example, so if you come up with a great proposal as an applicant, you can be awarded the money but not be required to get into a particular program or lab to receive it.</p>
<p>First-year and second-year grad students tend to be more successful in their fellowship applications, however, because many programs have classes or workshops on proposal-writing, and of course grad students in a program tend to have closer contact with a PI who can help with the research plan.</p>
<p>Thanks Mollie, I am sure I will be bugging you again at a later time about this.</p>
<p>tvgradschool, many thanks for your input</p>
<p>For international students without any funds
Can you please list about 15 school names that we are recommended to apply to for graduate studies with probable full tuition + stipend - funds ?</p>
<p>Hi tvgradschool, </p>
<p>thank you for all these friendly and useful advices. As you said, Rockefeller is an excellent place (I think even better in quality if not quantity than Harvard and Stanford), yet it's easier for an international student to get in there. I don't know why, Perhaps you know ? After all, I'm not that much interested in US universities because there are very few groups who are working in my field of interest. That's why I'm much more interested in UBC and Toronto than Harvard and Stanford. For example, if they accept me at Harvard and Toronto, I would rather go to Toronto, because their publications are much better (Nature, Cell, Science) than those of gruop leaders' from Harvard (Cancer Research/Oncogene). Therefore, what do you think of my chances for these universities ? Unfortunately, neither Rockefeller, nor Baylor, nor UPenn, has anything even remotely simillar to my scientific interest.</p>
<p>Kindest regards, </p>
<p>D.</p>
<p>DO YOU HAVE ANY FUND serbianguy ? How will you pay for your studies ?</p>
<p>Are you familiar with which schools offers good assistantships ?</p>
<p>Have you ever heard a word "scholarship" :-)) ?</p>
<p>Hey everyone,</p>
<p>I was wondering for some good advice. Last year, I applied to PhD programs (all Neuro minus Harvard):</p>
<p>Harvard-BBS
Penn
UofMichigan
Case Western
Jefferson
Rockefeller
Princeton
UCSF
Hopkins</p>
<p>I only got into three of them : Jefferson, Case, and UofM. I was pretty shocked actually, and my dad died while this was happening, and I was still finishing out my senior year. So, I wasn't really <em>thrilled</em> with any of them, so I decided to take a year off and re-apply. U of M though already accepted me for 09 in case I decide to go there once I'm done with all of this personal stuff.</p>
<p>So, I am going to re-apply.
Two main questions: where should I apply to? should i re-take the gre or just add the gre biochem subject test?</p>
<p>Here are my stats:
Undergrad GPA - 3.73
GRE: 750 Math/570 Verbal/6.0 Writing
Research Exp:
Summer at Los Alamos National Laboratory - computational work
Semester & Summer at Biochemistry Lab @ Muhlenberg College (my college, a small liberal arts college with a good rep for science)
Summer at Harvard Medical School - SHURP Program
Year in Neuro Lab Doing Honors Research at my college
1st Author Abstract I'll be Presenting at SfN 2008
Received honors in neuroscience for research
LoRs:
One from Harvard (not my PI, he was never around, so from SHURP director who supports me)
One from honors advisor/PI who wiill definitely write a strong, competitive letter
One from professor who was on my honors committee who will definitely write a strong letter
One possibly extra from los alamos (probably just an extra to add on, since it was so long ago (05) and he hasn't seen me in so long)</p>
<p>Not getting one from biochem PI I worked for. She is very anti-female, and we never clicked even though I worked my butt off there. She offered, and wrote me one last year, and wondering if it kept me out. My grandma died, so I took a week off once, and she gave me a B+ for research for that, which may hurt me, but I can explain on interviews, and based on how well I did everywhere else, not thinking it should matter...</p>
<p>**year now extra working at Teva Pharmaceuticals (no close universities where I live where I could do research for a year, and I'm mostly trying to save money because my finances got messed up when my dad passed away).</p>
<p>Anyway, any advice? I'm hoping to do better this year and make 2009 a better year than last for me...I don't know what I should shoot for...</p>
<p>Serbianguy,</p>
<p>Rockefeller is easier to get into than Stanford and Harvard as an international because they pay grad student stipends and tuition themselves (i.e. they don't rely on NIH funds to pay grad students). This allows them to admit whoever they feel is most qualified. I think it is approximately 50% international students at rockefeller. If you don't mind me asking, what area of research are you interested in?</p>