<p>That blog is wrong. NRC rankings were last released in 1995 (not 2007), with data being from 1993. Obviously, a lot has changed in 17 years. A new, long overdue ranking from the NRC is due at the end of this month, 2010.</p>
<p>So, looking at grad schools, if you can, you should find a school with as many labs that interest you as possible. First, look at the faculty at the schools you are targeting and see if they are doing research you would be interested in doing for five years. Just as important, check to see if they are well funded (use the NIH CRISP search) and publishing (e.g. check Pubmed to make sure it hasn’t been 3 years since their last publication…ideally they should have multiple research, not review article, publications most years). See who is publishing in high impact journals in the field. </p>
<p>Rankings are mostly meaningless for PhD grad programs in bioscience, and you should already be aware of what the quality “name” ones are just by already being in your research field… and you should be…you should have some substantial undergrad research experience (some sort of authorship is ideal, but at least presented posters). Research experience is more important than GPA or GREs, although poor scores can make your application fall in the discard pile in the immediate weed out process. However, what gets you in once you land an admissions interview is your demonstrated interest and ability in research, and if you have poor scores that raise questions for them, then your research is even more important. If you don’t have these things, then the above suggestion about being a research tech for a year or two is an excellent idea.</p>
<p>Anyway, outside of top “name” schools, like the Ivies, Hopkins etc that might carry some name cache, the place you get a PhD won’t matter nearly as much as the lab/mentor you end up with and the actual quality of research you conduct there. And as of now, you must assume you will do a post-doc for several years, whether you want to stay in academia afterwards or not. Therefore, in the end, a good post-doc is actually more important than where you do grad school. Your grad school will have little impact on where you do your post-doc, honestly, it comes down to your research and your mentor’s connections. It is just that these higher profile places also tend to have a larger number of high profile, prolific faculty, but there are great people at the forefront of fields at almost every school. I’m repeating myself, but the most important thing will be the lab you are doing research in, and things like the collaborative nature of the particular department, not the name of the school. In fact, since you have an interest in cell development & differentiation, you could end up in programs other than straight cell bio ones (like neuroscience or an interdisciplinary program etc., there are multiple choices to look at).</p>
<p>That said, and I’ve posted this before, one of the best ways to get an basic overview on the quality and scale of bioscience research at any university is to look at their NIH funding levels. The top ten, in order, are Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn, UCSF, Pitt, Michigan, Washington (Seattle), UCLA, Duke, and Washington U St. Louis. I don’t know what their admissions selectivity is for their cell biology PhD program, but Pitt is definitely not middle of the road in any biosciences, not that it means you shouldn’t try applying there if it has labs that are doing research that stick out to you.</p>