<p>Hello, so I've posted before but now I have an idea of my final standings. I studied a completely different major at a community college (Computer science), and had a GPA of 2.61. Upon transferring to my current university I decided to change to Biology. My GPA at my university is 3.3 with a 3.5 in biology and a 3.4 in my upper division courses. I also took more than the minimum required upper level courses for electives in place of easier lower level classes. I have 5 letters of recommendation that are glowing. I got a 166V 160Q and 5A respectively on the GRE. I have some research experience, but not much. Given all this information what are the prospects of getting into a upper-middle tier biology Ph.D program? Would it be better to do a masters first as I am more sure I could get into one? </p>
<p>You will likely only need 3 letters, you should choose the ones that best speak to your ability as a researcher.</p>
<p>What matters is how much research you have, is not much 1 week, 1 month, one year…?
You could could try applying to both masters and PhD programs to play it safe if you are concerned about which you should apply to.</p>
<p>Your GRE scores are good and your GPA is good but not stellar. Since your letters of reference are strong, you certainly should apply for Ph.D. programs. However, I would recommend applying to a mix of programs that you would feel comfortable attending. </p>
<p>If you apply to M.S. programs, remember that you will likely have to self-fund the degree unless it is a program without a Ph.D. degree. Because of this, it might be easier to enter an upper-middle tier program for the M.S.</p>
<p>The other thing to consider is that you might find a very good research advisor in a mid-tier program. Since your ability to have a research career after the Ph.D. often depends more on the advisor than the “name” of the school, you might find a great position in one of these schools too.</p>
<p>Start by looking at the [PhDs.org:</a> Jobs for PhDs, graduate school rankings, and career resources](<a href=“http://phds.org%5DPhDs.org:”>http://phds.org) web site and search on the criteria you find most important. The data is a bit old, from the 2007 NRC survey, but it is still a reasonable place to start looking.</p>
<p>To bump this:
My final GPA was 3.32 at my graduating university and 2.995 when I combine both my university (where I took 91 credits) and the community college (where I took ~80). At the community college when I was studying business my GPA was 2.1, I went back and took some classes, like calculus, physics, and chemistry, raised it to a 2.7. Since Jan 2011 my GPA at that college has been a 3.25, and since I transferred and switched to biology my overall GPA has been 3.45. My last 4 semesters my GPA has been 3.7 or higher and never below a 3.0 at the university level. With these trends, plus very strong letters of recommendation and my strong GRE scores, are my chances of getting into a decent grad program good?</p>
<p>The fact that your grades have improved over the last years of your B.S. is a good thing but it is hard for anyone to gauge your chances in graduate admissions as these are very individual processes. My suggestion is to talk with your LOR writers and ask them what schools might be a good fit for you. Choose 5-8 schools and make sure one is a school you would be happy to attend and a pretty sure thing to get into.</p>
<p>In comparing your stats to those of domestic students applying to my school’s (Illinois Institute of Technology) Biology program, you stack up very favorable as far as your GRE scores. The rising GPA is also a very good thing. If the letters are good, then you would be one of the stronger domestic applicants to our program. Hopefully this helps.</p>
<p>xraymancs: Actually that helps a lot because the program at your university is one of the programs I was looking to apply to. Thank you so much for the info!</p>