grad school dilemma for a biology major

Graduate School
1

<p>well, i'm applying for grad school in a couple months, and quite honestly, i am scared/stressed/<em>insert-bad-feelings</em>. </p>

<p>i go to a pretty normal school, UC Riverside, and my GPA's pretty normal too. around 3.4-3.5. and before anyone goes off about how much easier a run-of-the-mill school is, lets just say that i've had several required science classes where ~5 students get A's out of a huge lecture hall.
i've yet to take my GRE, but i'm not worried, I do extremely well on those sorts of standardized testing. I also know that GRE's practically do'nt factor in at all. </p>

<p>i've got C's in ochem, which pretty much killed me, b/c i've been doing very well everywhere else. i'm on a very accelerated schedule, so i'm graduating in 3 years. will this affect me negatively? </p>

<p>i want to get into a highend, topnotch biomedical research program. this isn't pride or rankings so much as the fact that i plan on spending the rest of my life in research, and i want to be involved in the latest and greatest research.</p>

<p>about the only thing i have going for me is that i've been very involved in research. i've worked in two professor's labs so far, at the same time, and spend on average, 18 hours a week in the lab (yes, that's more than 3 hours everyday.. on top of a full courseload), and will be in a summer research program, also at UCR. if anything, i'll have pretty good recs and a strong research background (my prof just informed me that i'll have authorship in his newest paper).
but at the same time, b/c i'm graduating early, i'm going to have 1 less year than everyone else to buff up my GPA and get more research under my belt. not to mention that my current research professors aren't very well known (well, one is, but he's in a completely different area of expertise X_X)</p>

<p>so, what should i do? take an extra year for undergraduate? (and do what then? i've already started a history minor b/c I'm done w/bio)
take a year off and work as a technician/labgrunt?
do a master's degree? (but i can't afford the tuition w/o fellowship!)
or just settle for a lower-ranked research institution?</p>

<p>my <em>dream</em> schools are, in order, MIT/Whitehead Institute (I believe their biol department is less selective than engineering), Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, UCSD/Salk Institute, & Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute. (I would put UCBerkeley or UCSF, but their 6+ years to graduation scares me...)
Grad school is so frustrating and stressful! I have no idea if I have ANY chance of getting into any of these schools or not! Am I just wasting my application money?? My time?? X_X</p>

<p>If anyone knows about the selectivity of these schools, or know of any very good research-oriented institutions, please reply!! In particular, I'm looking for good programs in microbiology, virology and cancer biology.</p>

<p>please advise! T_T</p>

2

<p>I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I wouldn't bet on MIT's biology program being less selective than its engineering programs. Not to say that it's impossible to get in (I know a few current biology grad students who came from state schools), just that admission to the graduate biology program is every bit as competitive as admission to most of the engineering programs.</p>

<p>Do you know of anyone you'd particularly like to work with? I can dish gossip ;)</p>

<p>Here's the FAQ: <a href="http://mit.edu/biology/www/graduate/appfaq.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://mit.edu/biology/www/graduate/appfaq.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

3

<p>mollie - ah well. i'll dream a little regardless. MIT's bio program was different from all my other choices was that it wasnt' actually the research that draws me, but the way the grad program is structured. i read the faq already, and i'm impressed how everyone says its an incredibly friendly and comfortable environment. so far, i haven't gotten that feel from any other graduate program. (and their list of cancer biol researcher's is rather impressive to boot)</p>

<p>its rather discouraging though, b/c even though MIT does accept state school students, they all seem to be 4.0 state school students. :( </p>

<p>another thing i forget to mention. i'm graduating a year earlier than my longterm boyfriend, and we are both on the PhD track. however, he's an environmental engineering major, so i'm looking around for schools with both excellent biomedical/cmdb AND environmental engineering (water speciality) grad programs, so to leave open the option that he follows me to my grad school.</p>

4

<p>
[quote]
I also know that GRE's practically do'nt factor in at all.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Not from what I've read...but hey, it's only one website</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princetonreview.com/grad/testprep/testprep.asp?TPRPAGE=264&TYPE=GRE%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princetonreview.com/grad/testprep/testprep.asp?TPRPAGE=264&TYPE=GRE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

5

<p>I think GRE's matter. As the website bluealien cites mentions it varies from school to school, but it is component. That being said, I do not think it usually held to be as important as references.</p>

6

<p>The three most important factors for PhD admissions in the sciences are (in no particular order): grades, recommendations, and research experience.
Test scores are a distant fourth. That said, they can never help you, but they CAN hurt you. As long as they are in the right ballpark, then they don't matter... but if your score are substantially lower than the mean for a given program, it raises red flags.</p>

7

<p>Graduate schools aren't going to care AS much about GPA as professional schools. GREs matter somewhat (especially if your high GRE score can offset your GPA). What will really help you, much more than anything else, is your solid recommendation from your research advisor and the publication. If you don't get into places you are excited about, you may consider taking a year off to do research full time. Not only will this improve your application, it will help you decide if grad school is really for you. You don't necessarily have to do the work at UCR either. There are a number of people I've known who've done a year or two years as assistants in labs at Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, etc. before applying to PhD programs.</p>

<p>Another thing you could do is get an MS in something (chemistry, etc), as you suggest, and then reapply to PhD programs - during your masters you could support yourself by TAing. If you're applying to MIT, you may as well also consider Caltech, which has excellent biology graduate programs as well. Don't be dissuaded by the count of 6 years. That's about normal for a PhD in biology. Good luck.</p>

8

<p>I totally understand about the boyfriend thing. Mine is an aerospace engineer, so I have to structure my dream schools around places he can go to school (and there are not so many good aero/astro programs!).</p>

<p>My academic advisor is a biology prof, and he has been on the admissions committee in the past. According to him, grades and GREs are at the same importance level: if they suck, that's bad news, but if they're awesome, they won't get you in. Research experience and a solid (read: not cliched) statement of purpose are the most important things MIT is looking for in a biology grad student. (That and the gleeful willingness to be a slave to the department. ;)) </p>

<p>Seriously, I would advise contacting anyone whose lab you'd be interested in working with. Most of the profs at MIT are wonderful people, and letting them know you're interested now could be a very useful thing.</p>

<p>I also agree with calkidd that taking a year to be a research assistant at a good school is a great idea. For some reason entirely mysterious to me, grad schools seem to think this is just swell.</p>

9

<p>thank you all for your thoughtful comments!</p>

<p>bluealien01 --> the site you linked is a princeton review site. since they kind of make all their revenue from test prep, they would definitely play up the importance of it.
the way i feel about the GREs is that it can keep you OUT of a grad program if you do bad enough, but it will never HELP you get into one. this stems from my undergraduate experience, where I thought my very high SAT score would help me, when, in fact, i ended up being rejected from every school and in the end, got deferred to UCR. </p>

<p>molliebatmit --> thanks for the advice! i'll definitely start looking up the MIT profs</p>

<p>i am thinking that i might just have to take a year off inbetween if this round of applications don't end up well. Would it be a better idea to do a Master's during that time, or work as a research assistant somewhere?</p>

<p>and how on earth do you nab a research assistant position at a top research institution? i mean, i can't work for free, i have to eat somehow... do i just email a professor and ask to work for bare sustenance wages? why would they do that when they can get a undergrad or grad student for free?</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
bluealien01 --> the site you linked is a princeton review site. since they kind of make all their revenue from test prep, they would definitely play up the importance of it.
the way i feel about the GREs is that it can keep you OUT of a grad program if you do bad enough, but it will never HELP you get into one. this stems from my undergraduate experience, where I thought my very high SAT score would help me, when, in fact, i ended up being rejected from every school and in the end, got deferred to UCR.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then what is the point (besides getting money)? Maybe they are really scams....</p>

11

<p>Oh, but undergrads and grad students don't work for free... undergrads can only work part-time (even you and I, working 18 hours a week during term, can't work as much as a tech) :) -- and PIs often have to pay part of a grad student's stipend if it's not covered by a fellowship. (Plus then they have to do that pesky advising thing.) Somebody has to do the grunt work.</p>

<p>My lab at MIT has 5 current lab techs, all of whom graduated from college within the past 2 years and are working for a year or two before they go to grad school.</p>

<p>I would imagine most schools would post technician openings somewhere on their website (I found MIT's relatively quickly by looking for human resources).</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
Then what is the point (besides getting money)? Maybe they are really scams....

[/quote]
</p>

<p>i think of it as a "double-check" mechanism. if a student has a high GPA, then the GRE score is a way for admission committees to know that it wasn't grade inflation or something weird happening. so if your GRE is low, that's warning signals. but if your GRE is high, well, that's expected so it won't help you.
if you've got a low GPA and high GRE, it could still mean that you're a lazy ass and didn't study at all through college, or that you just happen to be really good at bubbling-in answers. thus, it doesn't help you either... :( </p>

<p>mollie --> are lab techs in your lab usually involved with the research, or just do things such as wash glassware and stock inventory? do they get authorship on any articles? the idea of working as a lab tech to improve my application sounds reassuring, but at the same time, if its not actually furthering my experience in benchwork.. well... that's a problem.</p>

<p>i can't even imagine having 5 lab techs in a lab <em>_</em>. my lab is so poor, the PI refuses grad students that don't have funding.</p>

13

<p>Well, the techs have to do what the postdocs tell them to (so they can't really do experiments on their own projects), but if a paper gets published based on the tech work they did, they get authorship. This might vary from lab to lab or from school to school; I don't really know.</p>

<p>I think techs in my lab (and most labs at MIT...?) are a way for postdocs to have four hands and get lots of experiments done, rather than inventory stocking/glassware stuff (we actually have a person employed by our lab and our neighbor lab to clean glassware, so none of us actually do that anyway). Most stocking/ordering jobs get divided up among all the techs, grad students, and postdocs.</p>

<p>My lab is pretty well-off due to a few factors:
1. My PI is pretty well-known, at least in his corner of cellular neuroscience, and gets lots of grants.
2. My PI is Howard Hughes Medical Institute
3. My PI is kind of scary, so we usually have very few grad students.</p>

14

<p>biology at MIT = Good</p>

<p>ace your GRE like you said you would and then apply. If you don't get in go to Santa Cruz and chill in the woods working with sweet RNA labs.</p>

<p>That's what you should do.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
i think of it as a "double-check" mechanism. if a student has a high GPA, then the GRE score is a way for admission committees to know that it wasn't grade inflation or something weird happening. so if your GRE is low, that's warning signals. but if your GRE is high, well, that's expected so it won't help you.
if you've got a low GPA and high GRE, it could still mean that you're a lazy ass and didn't study at all through college, or that you just happen to be really good at bubbling-in answers. thus, it doesn't help you either...

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Or that you didn't finish. I never finished any sections of the SAT. It would take me 12 hours to take that thing.</p>