Undergrad senior majoring in Biology with low GPA. Is grad school still an option?

College Search & Selection
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<p>I have a D in General Chemistry 1 and a D in Organic 1. I recently switched from a B.S. to a B.A. because I knew if I took Organic 2, it would make my GPA even lower. My science GPA will be a 2.0 after this semester.
My ultimate goal would be to work for the CDC. I want to go to graduate school for Public Health, Epidemiology, or Molecular Biology. </p>

<p>Is graduate school still an option? I'm already staying an extra semester during my undergrad since I picked up a minor in Psychology this semester. I am a research student in biomedical informatics but have no lab experience. Also, I plan on taking the GRE next year. Please help :( </p>

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<p>Not that I’m aware of. You might work for the feds for several years as a tech, do well, and use that experience to catapult you into a grad program such as the ones at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. I know about a dozen years ago their nursing PHD program began accepting civilian health professionals working in the government and I wonder if other programs there do the same for such civilian federal employees. It’s a very long shot. Is there no way to make up those Ds in OC before you graduate? The DoD also has PhD scholarships thru SMART, but what kind of grades you need to get into that program I can’t begin to guess. Again, perhaps good work experience can mitigate the 2.0 in sciences.</p>

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<p>Public health is my field, so yay!</p>

<p>Is it an option? Sure, but probably not directly after undergrad. You can do some things in the interim to help improve your chances.</p>

<p>-Take at least 2-3 years off to work in the field. If you have no lab experience, if you really want to do molecular biology then you probably need to get experience in a lab. Lab technician jobs abound at universities and academic medical centers, so I would look for those. In epidemiology there’s less lab work and more mathematical modeling. Still, you need some research experience if you want a PhD - and even for an MPH, it can be helpful. So I would try to find some kind of medical/health-related research position. It doesn’t have to be at a university - look at think tanks, nonprofits, and government agencies.</p>

<p>-In the interim, take some classes to prove that you can do graduate-level work. If you are interested in epidemiology and you have not yet, take the calculus sequence (at least cal I and II, cal III would be helpful), linear algebra, and 1-2 semesters of statistics (preferably in the math department). Epidemiology is a math-heavy field; you won’t be competitive for epi without 1-2 semesters of calc and linear algebra at least. You could also/instead take some graduate-level classes at a nearby university to show that you can succeed. Which ones you take will depend on your goals: biology ones for mol bio; public health-related ones for the public health/epi degree.</p>

<p>-If you want an MPH, MPH programs prefer people with work experience anyway. Try to make it public health-related.</p>

<p>What is your overall GPA? You say that your science GPA is 2.0, but an MPH program will care about grades in other courses too (especially the social sciences), and even epi will care more broadly (much of epi is biomedical but there’s an entire field called social epidemiology, which is more social sciences-based).</p>

<p>If you want a PhD, that research experience will be crucial. If you show a marked improvement, your recommenders can write about that in their letter (I had a bad semester and my advisor addressed it in her letter, which helped immensely).</p>

<p>The CDC has several programs intended to shepherd people into the field, and I think one might be for BA-level folks (here’s the list: <a href=“http://www.cdc.gov/fellowships/careerinternships.html”>http://www.cdc.gov/fellowships/careerinternships.html&lt;/a&gt;). It’s like a 2 year program that you use to do work and a lot of people use it to segue into full-time CDC work. There’s also the postbaccalaureate IRTA at NIH, which is a post-college research program. Both are competitive so you may not qualify - but there’s no harm in trying (it’s free to apply to either).</p>