<p>Does anyone have any idea how the grad school at UC Merced is? I am planning to apply to it's Quantitative and Systems Biology group (School of Natural Sciences), you think it's a good bet?</p>
<p>This is a very vague question. A good bet for what? What do you mean “how the grad school is”?</p>
<p>I just want to know how the research there is. I checked out the profiles of a few faculty members, but I’m having a hard time deciding if it will be a good decision to join there.</p>
<p>Well, you can always reach out to the department for more information. Additionally, if you apply and are admitted, for science/engineering PhDs they generally bring you out at their expense for a visit.</p>
<p>That’s still a pretty vague question - how it is? Like how interesting? How much of it they do?</p>
<p>UC-Merced’s department has a webpage on which they describe the broad areas of biology in which they do research: [Research</a> Topics | Quantitative and Systems Biology](<a href=“http://qsb.ucmerced.edu/faculty-research/research-topics]Research”>http://qsb.ucmerced.edu/faculty-research/research-topics)</p>
<p>They also have a list of faculty, in which the faculty briefly describe what kind of research they do: [Faculty</a> | Quantitative and Systems Biology](<a href=“http://qsb.ucmerced.edu/faculty-research/faculty]Faculty”>http://qsb.ucmerced.edu/faculty-research/faculty)</p>
<p>If you want more information than that, I suggest you reach out to individual faculty members. You can also ask the departmental secretary if she can get you in touch with students who are willing to speak to you about the department and the research they do.</p>
<p>Given that the campus is new, Merced doesn’t have a Carnegie classification yet. But all of the other UC campuses are classified as Research University/Very High (RU/VH), which is the highest research classification a school can get - that means that their research output is very high compared to other universities.) I don’t have any reason to believe that UC-Merced won’t also be an RU/VH university when it finally is classified, or at the very least, start off RU/H (and there are some good research universities in that classification, like Syracuse and Alabama).</p>
<p>@juillet and @CanisNebula thank you for your suggestions.</p>
<p>Also, if you could suggest how my GRE scores are, it would be a great help.
Q: 158
V: 154 (I am an international student)
W: 3 (Too low right?)</p>
<p>I am planning to apply to Cell and Molecular Biology or immunology programs.
A total of 2 years of research experience as of now(but not all of it in my field of interest )
Where do you think I stand? In the sense, what colleges do you think I should apply to based on all this?
Will my GRE scores cause a problem?</p>