<p>i might have asked this question before but i'll go ahead and get more opinions on the matter:</p>
<p>i applied to grad school last year coming from an ivy league undergrad with a couple publications and great letters of rec, but my gpa was about a 3.0. i was rejected from everywhere i applied (i basically applied to top biology / bioinformatics programs) but i was given admission to a masters program in bioinformatics at the ivy where i did my undergrad. my school has said i can transfer into the phd program in bioinformatics given good performance in the masters program, but i also want to apply to a few phd programs again (i really wanted to go to a program like MIT / stanford and i don't want to give up on them just yet). if i do well in the masters program (a 3.5+ gpa plus i can add another publication to my resume), will i have a better shot at phd programs? i figure the only thing that was really lacking in my app as an undergrad was my poor gpa, but will i have better chances if i make up the deficiency in my grades? will my undergrad grades still matter, or will my masters grades be valued more? thx!</p>
<p>Getting great grades in a competitive master’s program (assuming yours is) and continuing interesting research will indeed strengthen your application, but I can’t say whether it will be enough to get into those specific programs. They are extremely competitive. Another potentially weak spot may have been the LORs – unless you read them, you don’t know what they said – or didn’t say. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that PhD programs in the biological sciences were insanely competitive this year. And they will be next year, too. You might want to aim high, but also a little lower.</p>
<p>What are your GREs? If you haven’t already, consider taking either the Biology or Biochemistry subject exam. A strong showing on a subject exam could give your application a push.</p>
<p>i don’t really feel like taking another standardized exam…i guess i did fine on the gre: 800Q and 610V.</p>
<p>@momwaitingfornew</p>
<p>do you know where i can find the statistics of last year applicants? where did you find out that the biology ph.d programs are going to be more insanely competitive? i ask because i’m planning to apply this coming fall.</p>
<p>Most of my knowledge is anecdotal. My D applied last cycle in neuroscience, and every program she applied to had huge increases in applications. I’m aware of several graduate programs at various universities that had double the number of applicants. Do I know that this happened across the board? No, I do not.</p>
<p>I think it corresponds in part to the population bubble that gave rise to the recent insanity in undergraduate admissions (too many qualified students for too few spots), starting in 2005 and 2006, when this year’s seniors were applying to college. Add in a fierce economic recession that prevents recent grads from finding employment, and you’ve got a lot of competition.</p>
<p>@sadilikeresearch If you poke around the registrar site of the school’s you’re interested in you can usually find a list of applicants broken down by pathway/major and the number of students accepted going back several years. It won’t tell you the stats of those accepted stutents, but it will show if there’s been an increase in applicants. However, they probably won’t release the 2009 application year numbers until near the end of 2010 or early 2011.</p>
<p>Both the schools I interviewed at said that they had seen increases in the number of applicants that were larger than previous years’ increases.</p>
<p>Poking through the FAQs of the schools I applied to, all of them said they didn’t release the stats of successful applicants because there are so many other factors in admission, such as LoRs and research.</p>
<p>so i seem to have come across some good fortune recently. after i finish my masters i’ll have a summer + an academic year to do something with while i reapply to phd programs. in this time i’ve managed to secure a position in a lab at MIT with a pi who i’m very interested in working with. hopefully this will give me another strong LOR plus an “in” to the school i really want to attend for my phd. my question is, will any of this help or am i just kidding myself? i really just want to do things the right way this time around…</p>
<p>Are you holding off applying next year because you think your LORs won’t be strong enough?</p>
<p>Working as a tech at the institution you would like to attend for grad school usually seems be a plus to your application, though I cannot recount an instance when this happened for MIT (because I don’t know any MIT techs that applied to MIT).</p>