Hi all, thanks for reading!
I am an international student studying mechanical engineering at Purdue University. I will be graduating next year (may 2018). I am thinking about applying direct PhD for Biomedical Engineering.
-GPA: 3.91
-Research Experiences:
Designing football helmets to reduce concussion among football players, and mathematical modeling for traumatic brain injury.
-Work Experiences:
TA for Thermodynamics and Machine Shop
-Extracurricular:
Student leader for student orientation program
Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS)
I am currently studying for GRE but haven’t taken it yet.
Assuming my GRE will be above the ‘cut off’ for different universities, where can I realistically go?
I really want to go to Johns Hopkins University since they have great reputation in medical field.
What do you guys think?
How much research experience do you have? 6 months? Two years?
You don’t just need to go to a university with a great reputation in the medical field; you need to choose a BME PhD program with professors who are doing the kind of research that you want to do. So look at the faculty at JHU. Are they doing the kind of research you want to do? Look at reputational comparisons of BME PhD programs. (The National Research Council’s are here: http://www.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124710/).
Your GPA is fine, and assuming that you have at least one year and hopefully more like 1-2 years of research experience you should be relatively competitive. What really matters is your fit with the department. You could have perfect grades and test scores, but if you want to do research that no one at your target department is doing then they’ll reject you because there’s no one to advise you.