<p>I'm a 3rd year MCB major from Berkeley and I will be applying to grad schools next year. I haven't been able to find many statistics for grad school online and I'm hoping you guys can help me figure out which schools I have a realistic chance at.</p>
<p>My GPA is around 3.75-3.8 and I will have done 2 years of solid research at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. I've started to look at the GRE and GRE Biochem subject test and I'm not worried about my scores. </p>
<p>I don't feel like I'm 'special' enough for HYPMS, but what would my chances be at Columbia, UPenn, or Johns Hopkins? What kind of schools should I consider to be matches or safeties? I would ideally like to be in a big east coast city, but should I apply to UCs anyway?</p>
<p>Thanks! :)</p>
<p>No looks from the Nobel committee? Yeah, you’d best hang it up and start searching the want ads.</p>
<p>You’re actually in good shape. You have a good GPA from a well-known school and solid research experience. If your research advisors write you good letters and you get good GRE schools, then you’d be in good shape for the top programs in the country. Ask your advisor about where to apply. He or she will probably tell you to look at places like Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Hopkins, Princeton, Rockefeller, etc if you want to be on the east coast. You may not get in everywhere, but you’ve probably got a decent shot at all those places.</p>
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For the reasons sirtuin brought up, that may not be true. (And, as an aside, Yale and Princeton are not grouped among the tiptop-tier in biological sciences. The acroynm should be HUBSM – for Harvard, UCSF, Berkeley, Stanford, MIT.)</p>
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You don’t apply to safeties in graduate school, as a successful post-graduate career is contingent on attending a good graduate program (whereas it is not so contingent on attending a highly ranked undergraduate college). If you can secure strong letters, then you stand a good chance of being admitted to the best schools.</p>
<p>Shoot for the moon. The worst that can happen is they don’t admit you.</p>
<p>Think less about which schools to apply to and more about your research! Your stats are great and if you get a publication (and resulting excellent letter of rec) from your research then you stand an excellent chance of getting into one of HUSBM. Think a lot about the pros and cons of each MCB field you are considering and never say no to an experiment or experience. Consider doing a year of research with your lab after graduating to see if 40+ hours a week of research is your thing. I just got an interview invite to Berkeley MCB. I may send you a PM with some questions. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice! I have some updates since the last time I posted:</p>
<p>GPA - 3.8 exactly (4.0 this past year)
Took the revised GRE, score ranges they gave were 750-800 both Verbal and Quantitative (I don’t know if I’ll find out the exact scores or the writing score till November…)</p>
<p>Still working at the same lab. No publications, but I have almost completed the project I’ve been working on. I’m working directly under the staff scientist and he treats me like a grad student. He had me mentor an undergrad for the lab’s summer internship program. I will probably get a really good letter from him.</p>
<p>I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m double majoring in Econ. I’m doing some research with an Econ professor who is interested in studying the relationship between genetics and economic trends and I should be able to get a good rec letter from him too.</p>
<p>Freaking out about the 3rd rec however. I’m not really into class participation in 100+ people lectures and unfortunately most of my science classes have been like that. I doubt many of my professors from previous classes know me by name. I’m probably going to have to get it from one of my professors this semester for my Cancer Bio class… written by GSI, signed off by professor probably. Would I be better off getting a letter from another scientist at Berkeley lab? He’s pretty well known, but he’s not UC Berkeley faculty and he would be talking about the same research as my PI…</p>
<p>Anyway sorry if this is too much information. Any advice/comments will be useful though!
I think I would most like to go to Columbia :)</p>