Chances Grad school: extremely low GRE and low GPA

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Just wondering what other think of my chances of getting into a top grad school considering low grades, very low GRE, great research experience, and excellent letters from well know/respected professors. Below are my stats:</p>

<p>GPA: 3.12 (transfer student so only counting GPA at UC Berkeley)
Initial C avg but general rise to a B+/A- avg near end
3.68 - prior to transferring to UCB</p>

<p>GRE: V:140 Q:156 A:3 (I'm incredibly horrible at these type of tests, which is one of the reasons I avoided the SAT by transferring into UCB)</p>

<p>Publications:
3 coauthorships in process - one currently in review for Nature (ie high impact journal)</p>

<p>Research experience: 2 labs (3 years total research)</p>

<p>2 poster presentations at UCB</p>

<p>Low income family</p>

<p>Working full time while being a Full time student</p>

<p>Withdrew for two years since I was unable to afford college</p>

<p>Lastly, lets assume I wrote a pretty awesome personal statement considering all the challenges I had to overcome to get to where I am today. </p>

<p>I applied to top neuroscience programs at Yale, UCSF, Stanford, UCSD ect...</p>

<p>I'm worried mainly due to my grades and especially since I have a ridiculously low GRE =(. Also, I'm only interested in top school, so if I don't get in, what would you say my chances are if I work in a lab at UCSF for a year or two?</p>

2

<p>Chancing for graduate school is far murkier than undergraduate chancing. I’d love to chance you for grad school if I could but I cannot.</p>

3

<p>Honestly, I would say that you are a worthy candidate for some masters programs, but probably not any top programs or any Ph.D. programs. The reason I say this is because many top tier schools have cut-offs for GPAs and GREs - meaning they won’t even look at your application unless you have a GPA and GRE above a certain score. Also, Ph.D. programs are extremely competitive even at lesser known schools. I would definitely retake the GRE if I were you. Your verbal score is extremely low probably the 10th or 15th percentile. Your quantitative GRE score seems solid to me though but it couldn’t hurt to raise it a bit.</p>

<p>But it sounds like you have solid research experience. I would definitely consider applying to some masters programs if I were you. If you can prove that you can succeed at the masters level and take the GREs over to raise that verbal score, you would optimize your chances.</p>