<p>I am interested in going to grad school, but do not know where I should go or what I should major in.</p>
<p>Basically, I'd like to become really good at fine-scale synthesis, manipulation, and design. Sensor technology is interesting too. Applying it to biology would make it much more interesting to learn, so I was thinking that something like medicinal chemistry or some sort of pharmaceutical science would be perfect. I'd even be up for majoring in chemistry and taking a bunch of bio and pharmaceutical electives since i'm most interested in chemistry.</p>
<p>Any suggestions? I've thought about University of Southern California, UC-San Francisco, U-Washington, and U-Georgia.</p>
<p>Undergrad: physics major with a bunch of bio and chem courses
GRE: 1350 (could definitely score higher next time. Due to outside circumstances blah blah blah, I didn't study for it and ran out of time to answer questions blah blah blah excuses excuses).</p>
<p>Have you any research experience… internships? When do you graduate?</p>
<p>Biophysics is interested and in-demand. Applicants go through rigorous interviews… but you’re not going to make it if you don’t have a solid idea of what you want to do. </p>
<p>Admission to grad school isn’t about GRE scores and GPAs; rather, you need to convince the committee that they want you in their department. You need to be focused and enthusiastic.</p>
<p>So test the waters a bit, work in a laboratory, do a research internship (I went through DAAD-RISE program… which was awesome), and hopefully you’ll know what you want. </p>
<p>There’s a ton of fields within the physics umbrella… maybe you should stick to your major and explore those… I mean there’s condensed, particle, biophysics, chemical physics, theoretical physics, blah blah…</p>
<p>Edit: I forgot to mention - you really shouldn’t be looking at individual schools if you don’t know what you want to do. Figure that out first, and then find out where the professors who write the journal articles you’re reading and getting a hard on for are working. Then go out there and apply to those schools, email the professors with intelligent questions about their work…</p>
<p>You shouldn’t go to graduate school just because you want to. You need to have a clear plan and a goal of what you’re going to do with that degree. You also need to think of programs/majors before you think of places, because your major field is going to determine what schools you apply to.</p>
<p>Like Ixington said, you should probably work in a laboratory and do some research to help you decide what you want.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies guys. Let me clarify a few things…
I DO know what I want to do. I want to learn about synthesizing and designing substances. I also want to learn how to design and develop in vivo sensor technology.</p>
<p>I just don’t know whether or not I should choose biochemistry, pharmaceutical science, or chemistry with a bunch of non-chemistry electives in order to learn what I want to learn. After looking at each curriculum, they all seem to offer a different most, but not all, of what I want to learn. So, I came here to see if perhaps there was a suitable major that you guys might know of that I do not know of.</p>
<p>Those places that I’ve chosen DO have programs that I’m interested in - They aren’t just random choices. Also, working in a laboratory before graduate school is what I wanted to do, but finding a job has been tough these days.</p>
<p>An essential part of understanding the differences in the various choices you list, is interning or volunteering in a research lab. If you judge these topics by what you learn in coursework-even if the coursework has lab portions, you will not have an accurate sense of the topic nor of the career associated with the topic. </p>
<p>If you are looking for a paid position in a lab, it is unlikely you have the experience to obtain such a position. You really need to begin by being willing to volunteer in a lab. It takes quite a bit of effort on the labs part to train individuals without any prior outside of class lab experience.</p>