<p>Hi All,
so I have recently been thinking a lot about my future in graduate school. I am a junior at Duke University, majoring in biomedical engineering and getting a certificate in neuroscience. I have worked in a neural prosthetics at Duke for the past year and will continue to work there. However, I am more interested in medical research utilizing RNA - more molecular biology side of neuroscience than engineering. I was wondering if it would be possible for me to pursue a PhD in an avenue of neuroscience that was more molecularly based even though I majored in engineering. I was thinking even perhaps a PhD in immunology. Is this a possibility? I have no room to take organic chemistry before I graduate and that's really my biggest concern. I have about a 3.85 - but I'm sure my GPA will continue to lower my last couple years as classes get harder. Anyway, any advice?</p>
<p>I think this question would be better suited on the Graduate Admissions section of the forum.</p>
<p>Having a strong background in research and strong letters of recommendation will matter more for graduate school applications than your specific undergraduate major.</p>
<p>Many of the top biomedical sciences PhD programs really like getting applicants with an engineering background. It will be to your advantage to take as many upper-division biology, chemistry, and neuroscience courses as you can fit in, just so you won't be so far behind graduate school classmates who majored in molecular biology as undergraduates.</p>
<p>(As an aside, many biology programs have umbrella applications -- you just send one application, and you have the ability to choose a lab doing microbiology, immunology, neuroscience, etc, once you matriculate to the school. If you're interested in both neurobiology and immunology, you should definitely look for schools with these types of umbrella programs, since they will give you quite a bit of flexibility as to which avenues to pursue in graduate school.)</p>