<p>I am an undergrad engineering student. My school is ranked in 60s in the national university ranking. I do not have a great GPA, I have a GPA little above 3.7. I have not taken GRE but I am sure I will not get good score. I have a TA experience of one and half year but do not have a research experience. I did an internship for a summer. I am planning to apply to V Tech, U of Mich, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt University. Do you think I am making good choice or I am applying to schools that wont suit my GPA and stuff? I would really appreciate to hear from you guys. BTW, I am an international student, as you might have noticed from my writing.</p>
<p>Ph.D. level or Masters level? Research will matter less at the Masters level. You seem pretty average for a Ph.D. hopeful (minus the research), so I doubt you'd be likely to get serious consideration for most Ph.D. programs without at least some research experience, but a 3.7 is pretty strong in engineering as I understand, so that may be to your advantage as long as you can get your GRE score up to par. You seem like you would still be quite strong for Masters-level programs and, if you can get some research experience between now and application time, even for some Ph.D. programs.</p>
<p>apumic,</p>
<p>How much research experience would you recommend PhD applicants to have?</p>
<p>I'm expecting to have a year and half of research experience under my belt when I graduate in 2010, but I'm applying next December, obviously.</p>
<p>Will it matter that when I apply, I'll only have about six months or so in a lab?</p>
<p>I'm Biomedical Sciences, and I currently am doing research in a genetics lab on UCB campus. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Yeah, six months won't be as competitive as a couple of years but you can't change that now so don't worry about it. Make your time in lab worth it, get involved in side projects, propose new projects etc.</p>
<p>I agree with belevitt. My understanding is that it's the productivity of you and your lab that matters (that is, the quality) not so much the quantity that counts. Sure 6-12 months is going to be a hard sell when comes to a personal statement and interviews but if you can jump in head first in the deep end and take the initiative to get a project started yourself or try for second author on something, that will help quite a bit. If possible, try and get something at least to conference before submitting your first application. If you can a paper published, that'd be even better. 6 months isn't long, but I had my first first author presentation 9 months into my time with my first research lab. It happened that things worked out amazingly well and we got it accepted to a top tier nat'l convention and are now working on getting the paper published. Perhaps you'll get lucky like that. It just takes a lot of knocking on doors and then pushing things forward once you get a lead.</p>
<p>Thank you apumic for your insight. I am applying for masters level. I am not ready for Ph D program. I will be working for a professor for his research next semester. I have already taken 2 graduate level classes and I will take one next semester.</p>