Life science graduate school (PhD)

Graduate School
1

<p>Hey how come most of you all have such scarily high competitive stats e.g. 4.0GPA, 3yrs research exp, super high GRE scores & even 1st-authored publications!? </p>

<p>I have never ever seen an undergraduate with 1st-athored publications ...at least here in Singapore. In fact, I think most of the PhD students do not even have a 1st-authored paper, maybe only few co-authored paper.</p>

<p>Seriously, if I am going to apply to a do a PhD, I would definitely not apply to high-profiled school where ppl with such stats are also going to. Its like so competitive. So should I apply to a less competitive school instead?</p>

2

<p>arcas - If you continue to have a negative outlook towards applying to graduate school, then I’m almost positive you won’t get accepted anywhere. No one gets anywhere in life without taking risks, whether moderate or extreme. I don’t mean to be harsh but if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will. So if you don’t believe you’re a competitive applicant then neither will the admission committee.</p>

3

<p>For the top programs, you can expect the successful applicants to have very good GRE scores, 2+ years of research experience, and decent grades (not necessarily 4.0, but it likely won’t be a 3.0 either). You can also expect poster presentations, though everyone won’t have a first-author paper. The most helpful thing is usually letters of recommendation and the research experience. I applied to neuroscience programs, but here are my stats (they might help):</p>

<p>GPA:slightly below 3.4
GRE: slightly below 1400
Research:several papers and a lot of poster presentations, with some at national meetings
LOR: excellent</p>

<p>I did not get any interviews at the top 10 schools, but did get one in top 20. I would suggest you apply to 1-2 VERY reach schools, 2-4 sort of reach but where you actually have a good shot, and 2-3 schools that might be a safe bet. People have their own distribution for applying, but the idea is to apply broadly for situations like yours.</p>

4

<p>top 20 would be good for me. I certainly dun expect myself into a top 10 schools since Im an international applicant which makes it even more difficult. </p>

<p>OmicronP8- u have several research papers and excellent LOR! Of cos tats most attractive to the admission committee! man…i can only try harder to boost my stats now.</p>

5

<p>For me the most important fact is motivation. To tell my story, I spent the first two years of my Bachelors in the “smart but lazy” category, because much of the curriculum (which is fixed here for these first two years) did not interest me.</p>

<p>Then I got to the stage where I could partly chose my courses, and I was doing much better, despite 50 credits worth of courses per semester (30 credits is considered to be the norm here) and getting involved in research. I was starting to do a lot of unrequired work that was related to my interest (i.e. reading books on statistics, biogeography theory) and got my GPA up from around 3 to 3.5 (rough conversion to US system). At the same time I got my first research experience, first in a plant ecology lab, then in an external internship on lichen genetics. After that, I started my Masters thesis in an amazing (population genetics) lab where I would happily spend my evenings in. At some point I knew I wanted to do a PhD in this field, and got recommendations from senior researchers where I should go to. I then did some research on what I would be required to do, and then did GRE and TOEFL with the motivation that I could get my hands on really amazing data sets and do cool stuff with them if I just did well on these (embarassingly stupid) tests.</p>

<p>In the end, it probably comes down to talent, dedication and also knowing the right people, for I guess without the reference letter of my supervisor I would not have been accepted at 3 of the top4 schools in my field.</p>

<p>I don’t know the situation in Singapore at all, and whether you still have the time for this, but my suggestions for you would be to develop your interests outside of classes, find some areas that really interest you, read stuff about it, probably just textbooks at first, and original articles later. Thrive to understand what you read. If you are not exposed to research at all as an undergraduate in Singapore, you’ll probably have to show more initiative. Introduce yourself to a professor who is willing to let you work with him, ideally with your own ideas on what you want to do. Alternatively you might find an internship in some company or at an external research institute.</p>

<p>But the important thing is: Be optimistic about yourself. Its not necessarily true that being international makes admission harder. Top institutions have tons of international students. Half a year ago I would not have believed that I had a shot at places which I now had to decline. Chances are you are better than you think you are. Don’t think about the ranking of the school, think about what you would want to do, and find out where the best (or second best) people doing that stuff are. Life science is a huge field, and even the biggest universities typically concentrate on some distinct areas. You don’t have to persuade the admission commitee that you are the best applicant ever, but you do have to persuade them that you are one of the very best applicants for exactly their department, for exactly their research.</p>

6

<p>Hi jixani,</p>

<p>thank you so much for ur suggestions. it sures makes me think i do have a chance at graduate school after all. heh heh. im actually aiming for johns hopkins or harvard. i went thru ur posts and u got into stanford? wow, congrats!</p>