<p>I am currently attending a community college and have interned at a local University, Cal Poly Pomona, for the summer in an immunology lab. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and am interested in a career in research. In particularly, I enjoy the field of neuroscience. I was wondering how my research in my undergraduate years will affect my chances of getting into a grad. program. That is, I will likely not be able to research in neuroscience at my prospective institution after I transfer. My GPA is a 3.88, I dont imagine it will drop below a 3.6 and certainly intend to get it up to a 3.9. Thanks for any and all advice!</p>
<p>(P.S. I intend to transfer to Cal State Fullerton for my undergrad. It is really beyond my reach to financially afford a UC or private.)</p>
<p>-Travis</p>
<p>I think as long as you do research related to neuroscience, you should be fine. If the research you want to do will involve bench science or a wet lab, then you should seek out a research experience like that - make sure you get those skills. If you want to do more behavioral neuroscience than try to get behavior lab experience.</p>
<p>You want to show the ability to do research, even if your undergrad lab experience isn’t exactly what you want to do in graduate school. The more experience you can get, the better.
Since you won’t be able to do neuroscience research directly, try to take a variety of classes that will demonstrate to a graduate school that you will have the skills necessary to do research in this field: biology, physics, math (especially statistics), computer science, psychology.</p>
<p>Many PhD programs in the biomedical sciences are “umbrella” programs, meaning that students interested in a variety of specialized fields apply and are admitted to a common program. It’s not unusual for applicants to these programs to indicate an interest in one subfield while having done their undergraduate research in another.</p>