<p>This is a good question. I’m not a PhD (I am applying this year), so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. However, I have worked full-time in an academic lab setting for over 5 years and seen enough PhD interview weekends now that I’ve become pretty familiar with the way these admissions processes work. </p>
<p>If you are definitely going to take a year off before applying, I would emphatically recommend that you keep doing research. If you don’t do research, you would need to have a really good reason why you decided to do something else. Otherwise, admissions committees may think that you are unsure what you want to do after college. Doing research in your year off will demonstrate your commitment. The only other thing that comes to mind that will look great to committees (and fellowship sources like NSF) is something service related, like educational volunteering. Most schools consider research experience, publications, and rec letters the best indicators of grad school success, and I don’t think there is ever such a thing as “enough” experience. Doing an extra year of research may also allow you to narrow in your research interests and write a clearer personal statement about your long term career goals.</p>
<p>I would also recommend that you do research at a different institution, or at least in a new lab, unless you have a current project that is going really well or can’t bear to part with your current PI. It sounds like you already have a publication and stellar rec from your current research group. Admissions in grad school (especially in the biological sciences) is at least as much about having great recommendations and research as it is about test scores and GPAs. If you can get another PI, especially a well connected PI in your field, to write you a letter, you will increase your odds of being admitted. </p>
<p>As far as getting a job goes, I personally think it is much easier to get them when you are actually near the campus than by applying online. The unfortunate truth about many university research jobs is that the PI often has a specific candidate in mind when the job is posted online. In order to follow University rules they post the jobs online and allow “open competition” for the spot, but really there is no spot. However, when you are on campus you can walk around and look for postings on billboards. These are generally real positions for which there is no pre-assigned candidate. When I graduated college, I had very low success with applying online (1 interview for about 50 applications) but high success with applying for jobs that were posted on campus (1 for 1, which became the job I had for two years after college). I think it would be hard to get a job several months in advance, usually they have specific projects in mind that they want to move along immediately. If you are interested in pharma, industry, or government, well that’s a different story and I wouldn’t know much about that.</p>
<p>With your test scores you will be fine on that front, I don’t think very many schools have hard cut offs and even if they do you should be above them. A 3.0 GPA is a little low, but if you want to demonstrate competency at the graduate level you could take one or two graduate courses as a non-matriculated student during the next year. Most schools will let you take a few courses this way, and if you do well it will be a plus on your application and may temper your slightly low GPA. If you work at the school where you are taking the course, you will likely be able to get tuition reduced or waived depending on the school’s policy. As someone who has taken graduate courses while working full time, I can say that the work load for most bio grad courses is pretty manageable compared to undergrad courses. Usually it’s lots of reading of journal articles with a couple tests and maybe a paper or presentation, but not much other homework. </p>
<p>Finally, I have friends who have had mediocre to low GPAs and have gotten in to good schools (UCLA and U Chicago come to mind).</p>