I want to go back to school for a PhD in clinical/translational science. I’ve worked in clinical trials as a project manager for 4.5 years now. Every time I attempt to delve further into the science side of things, my hand gets slapped and I get told “that’s for the MDs & PhDs”. I only have a BSc in biochemistry. I’m frustrated with my company’s response - but know I will face this wall regardless of where I’m at. I’m intrinsically excited about the work we’re doing and think I’d do great in a graduate program. Here’s the catch:
My undergrad GPA was a 2.4.
Reasons:
I was first gen so wasn’t expecting to want more school after my BSc. “C’s get degrees” as my peers & parents would say.
I was struggling to keep my head above the water financially from my sophomore year onward.
I’m mentally ill, did not know it, and only had access to good treatment after getting a job with good health insurance.
I’d just left a religious, oppressive household. I’m gay (well, bi-curious for women; hence the username), and the freedom to be myself led to a lot of partying and rebounding from my family home in all sorts of ways.
I was in an abusive relationship for my last 2 years of the program.
Let’s just say undergrad was intense in the best and worst of ways. To qualify this, I:
Volunteered as a research assistant (6 mons), had a manufacturing internship at a nutraceutical company (8 months), was paid to be a lab manager (1 year)
Ran an LGBTQ-STEM student organization for 2 years while there
Taught an official course during my senior year (general liberal arts class that introduced undeclared majors to the variety of subjects they could learn about)
Worked as the director of advocacy for one of the multicultural coalitions
Since then, I’ve:
Gotten 4.5 years of experience running clinical trials. I’ve single-handedly managed 2 phase I trials and was second in command on 3 phase II trials, including one in COVID & another that’s informing an FDA EUA approval. A year and a half of experience was in drug safety/pharmacovigilance at a top 10 pharma company, analyzing adverse affects of investigational and FDA-approved drugs.
Gotten clinical research professional certified (from national organization and certificate from UC Berkeley)
I’m studying for the GRE for the next 6 months and hope to knock it out of the park. I’m a great test taker and am confident that if I apply myself, I will get a score in the 90th percentile. I’ve bought books about writing admissions essays and will workshop my essay for a few months, showing it to anyone who will look at it. I’m also looking through programs for potential mentors to establish a connection with.
Thing is, as I do this, the admissions requirements are weathering my resolve. I’m afraid I’m putting all this work in only to be rejected over a(n understandably important) metric from 5 years ago.
I don’t need to go straight into a PhD. I’d be happy to do a year-long post-bacc, a year of retaking courses, or a masters whose credits would transfer into the PhD - any of these to show that when I actually apply myself, I can do very well academically. However, I cannot re-do my bachelors degree. I have a stable partner and I want to start a family in the next 6-7 years. I need to be done with school and back in the workforce before that happens.
TL;DR: Please read just the bullet points. Would you admit me? What can I do to increase my odds, short of re-doing my bachelors degree? Is impactful work experience weighed heavy enough to counteract my poor GPA?
Not everyone gets A’s in college. ‘ be surprised to find out how many B/C undergrad students just like you go on to become leaders in their field.
Don’t be discouraged.
Continue with your plan. It sounds like you’ve established some roots where you are? So moving to another city isn’t an option? If we knew where you’re located, it might be easier to assess your options. I understand that you might prefer to keep some information confidential.
I don’t want to lie to you. But your situation is not good.
Typically the minimum GPA in grad school is 3.0. Furthermore, grad classes are harder. Unfortunately, you have demonstrated that you cannot handle the graduate level workload.That’s what the 2.4 means. There are 170 or so schools that give PhD’s in physics . At the lowest ranked one, it is easier to hire junior faculty than it is to accept a grad student with below a 3.0. That’s what you’re up against.
My advice is to cast as large a net as you can. Many places will simply dismiss you out of hand. We can argue that that isn’t fair, but that’s what’s going to happen. So you need to apply to very many places.
Will non degree classes help? Maybe, maybe not .
I would not mention any of the personal situation in your letters. These sorts of things derailed you in the past, and they could reappear and derail you in the future. Better to keep quiet.
OP- have you met with someone in human resources at your current company to learn whether you actually need a PhD to do what you want to do? Perhaps you could take five courses (I’m just making this up) to do a deep dive into the subject areas and that would suffice? Or talk to other companies in your industry- informational interviews- to see what it would take to switch tracks at their company?
Don’t assume that just because the people with the jobs you want have doctorates at your current company, that this is the situation everywhere. Maybe it is- but it seems worth it to take a few months exploring what your career options are- right now- with your current experience, vs. going through the process of applications, getting recommendations, prepping for the GRE, etc.
There’s usually more than one way through the mountain- over, around, a tunnel… why not explore those first???
I really don’t want to sound discouraging, but no grad school worth attending is likely to accept you. These schools use your college grades as one of the first filters. GRE scores are just another filter and they won’t compensate for your low grades in college. It wouldn’t be worthwhile to apply (or spend years in a program that isn’t worth attending). You should look for a different path to achieve your goal.
See certificates or masters offered by University of Arizona, for example. Contact them directly about what grades are needed in science prereqs in order to be admitted.
I would think that the normal way to go about this would be to ace the GRE’s, apply to a master’s program, establish your academic bona fides with straight A’s in the master’s program, and then apply to PhD programs. Depending on where you live and how able your are to relocate, programs in Canada might also be worth looking at.
I agree that no amount of acing the GRE will get you directly into a funded PhD program with a 2.4 undergrad GPA. You’re going to have to come out-of-pocket for a masters program, and even for those, it won’t necessarily be easy to get in. However, with strong test scores, strong recommendations, strong work experience, and a 1st-gen (not URM tho?) background, you may be able to crack a masters program at a well-chosen school. Show what you can do in a masters program and then maybe a PhD could be back on the table. Whether you could get all the way to a doctorate inside of 6-7 years, though… that could be a tight timeline, when you consider the time you’ll need to invest in preparation and application cycles, on top of separate masters and PhD programs with no reasonable expectation that all of the former coursework will apply toward the latter.
I definitely respect your ambition and don’t want to discourage you if this is truly your passion. But I’d think hard about return on investment and consider whether there are other paths to advancement that might take less of a bite out of your personal/family life. In particular, I’m thinking of the math/stats side of things. Research teams are always looking for specialists in this area; you can have a respected and valued role in research without a lab-science doctorate, if you get a masters in biostats, data analytics, or a quant-heavy MPH. There are programs where you can take classes via open enrollment prior to applying. (I know that the UMass Amherst online MPH program is one; I’m sure there must be others.) Public Health might be a good route for you, as they’re really the torch-bearers in terms of equity and social justice issues in the research world, and would be more likely to value the lived experience and perspective you’d be bringing to the program than a pure-STEM program would. Just another angle to consider. Getting a PhD would still be an option in public health, epidemiology, biostats, etc, but the masters might improve your prospects enough, or at least get you to a good plateau such that going straight through to the PhD wouldn’t be a necessity.
I hope you’ll keep updating us as you figure things out!
I’m going to disagree, but with a twist: go get a Master’s first. Your experience & LoRs should get you, a strong performance will be persuasive to PhD programs- if that is still where you want to go. It takes work- the leg-work of finding programs where your particular background will help you stand out & who will give you a stipend is real- but it is do
if this were effective, we’d see a lot of people who followed this path in Graduate School. We really don’t.
I suspect 2.4 is far too low for most Masters programs. Acing the GRE is easier said than done. Furthermore, there is no subject test in this field, only the general test. That will be unhelpful. Finally, this will almost certainly be self pay.
I agree that we don’t see a lot of it- but when it does happen it is often for somebody who wasn’t there yet for UG (for whatever reasons- there are many!), but whose work experience is directly relevant to the master’s that they are applying to, with an LoR from somebody who can connect the dots between what they have been doing and the specific master’s program.
The work of identifying a good-fit masters program can be tedious and/or daunting (and may even require taking a CC course or two to fill in missing classes), so yes, it is easy to toss off ‘go get a Masters’ as if it will be an easy thing to do. But, the process of choosing the program will help fine tune the thinking for both now and for the PhD, and could/should shorten the length of the PhD- or clarify whether that is the path the OP wants to take.
See if you can find a program that’s willing to help you but from what I understand, from my children’s experiences, is that a number of graduate studies are very competitive and difficult to gain admission.
I don’t know what specialty you hope to enter. If you’re going to continue with bio chem, however, that 2.4 is really a game changer. The GRE test is really not that easy.
There are thousands of former students out there, who couldn’t get into medical school but ended up with biology-related majors who are competing and applying to grad schools whose grades and GRE scores are really top notch. This will be your competition.
You have an interesting background, so you may want to weave your professional experience into your applications, as much as you can but, the GPA is a record of how you performed in the classroom, at a university setting. That’s the thing you have to battle to prove your worth.
I have a PhD in a closely related field (public health).
To me, the key to unlocking a PhD program are a combination of the last things you said: doing a post-baccalaureate program and/or taking some graduate classes part-time, to demonstrate your true academic potential.
I don’t work in academia anymore, but if I were evaluating a student with a story like yours AND who had some As in some graduate classes in the field, I’d admit you to at least give you a chance to shine. You lay out a very compelling argument: your undergrad was almost 5 years ago; you have legitimate reasons for not getting good grades in college that are now resolved; you’ve got 4.5 years of lab research experience, which is VERY valuable in a clinical PhD program; you’re certified, which is also very valuable. Essentially, all I’d be wondering about is your ability to succeed academically and 3-4 part-time classes with As at the graduate level (and a letter of recommendation from the professor of one of those classes) would allay those concerns.
You may have to get a master’s first before a PhD, especially if you want to attend a top program, but I think you can do it.
…we do see a lot of it. Or at least I have. I know lots of folks who didn’t do well in undergrad, got a master’s degree, and then went to PhD programs.
I also completely disagree with the advice not to talk about these personal situations in your statement. That’s the opposite of every piece of advice I’ve seen on writing personal statements when you have a lower GPA. Being in an abusive relationship, struggling financially, and having uncontrolled undiagnosed mental health disorders are not things that are likely to occur again and derail you (especially not all at the same time!). I’m not sure I would mention the leaving a religiously oppressive household - been there, so realize the impact it can have, but that one’s a little less justifiable.
It’s not better to keep quiet. If you do, your professors will assume that your poor performance was because you couldn’t handle the work, not because you have mitigating factors to take into account.
A lot of great schools (most public universities) offer the opportunity for students to enroll as a non-matriculated student. Typically there is a maximum amount of credits you can take toward a specific degree but its a good opportunity to show you can handle the graduate level work. What state are you in? What’s your career goals?