ThePursuit

I don't recall the ACS PChem Exam being too bad, but quantum mechanics is on it. We had to take it for our final exam since our department is ACS-certified. Focus on the broad concepts. You're not going to be asked to solve probability densities or anything that requires integration.

This is a department specific kind of thing as others have said. I am heading into a department that is largely Mac and so I purchased the 2016 MacBook Pro with 512GB Capacity, 16GB Memory, and a slightly boosted i5 processor. This came to about $2,300 in total after buying a few accessories. What may kill you are the number of adaptors you will need for old flash drives. Prior to getting my new MacBook, I used Windows since I was a young kid (anyone remember Windows 98?). I am very satisfied with my purchase. There is a learning curve, but it's not a large one. The major learning curve is associated with Word/Excel on Mac, a lot of the paragraph options are in different locations. If you need Windows for your work, PC is probably a much more logical and economical option; however, you can boot Windows as a virtual machine on MacOS. A lot of my friends going into chemistry programs went the PC route. My one friend absolutely stands by ASUS as a PC brand. I would warn against Acer PCs, from my experience they crash after a year or two. If you decide to get a MacBook Pro, Apple just announced an updated model with i7 processors for the entry model. I hope this helps.

Tomorrow is April Fools, so I hope they don't e-mail me tomorrow. All things considered, I'll be attending Penn State's Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology PhD program. I also got an acceptance to North Carolina State's Functional Genomics PhD program. I have yet to hear from Ohio State's Biochemistry Program and the University of Pittsburgh's MCDB program. I obviously will not be changing my decision, but it would be nice to hear back from them.

I was told by one of the faculty that wrote a letter of recommendation that the summer before is a time to first and foremost relax. While I'll probably try to publish one of my research projects over the summer, I plan to enjoy some fishing, swimming, and other outdoor activities I won't have much chance to do in graduate school. I also have a list of books I want to read in the event I have a rainy day. In July, I'll probably start reaching out to faculty seeing if there is any literature I should read to prepare for a rotation in the lab. As for moving in, I can't move in until two days before orientation starts so I'll have to be efficient furnishing my apartment.

To answer your question, you should NEVER misrepresent your goals. This could lead to you possibly entering a program that you have no interest in completing, which is arguably worse than not getting into a graduate program at all. Since it seems you now have a much clearer idea of what you want to do, look for programs that accommodate your interest in computational biology/chemistry and explain in your personal statement what inspired you to abandon the work you were previously doing. If it helps, my major research project as an undergraduate investigated fern ecology, but I'm going into a Biochemistry PhD program that is more in line with my core interests, namely chromatin-mediated gene regulation and other topics in epigenetics. It may have helped I did some biochemical research one summer and cell biology during an REU, but I don't think the fact my major project was totally unrelated hurt me. Considering I'm where I want to be, it all worked out. Does your institution have an introductory bioinformatics course you could take? I took one semester of bioinformatics; it covered how all of the next-gen sequencing technologies work while also introducing me to Python, command line, and the general principles of bioinformatics. Overall, I don't think your odds are that bad so long as you communicate your change of focus in your personal statement.

I will be attending Penn State's BMMB program in the Fall and I found a 1 bedroom apartment for $1,025/month about seven blocks from campus. I would get searching immediately as I was told that rooms go very quickly after spring break. The further from campus you go the cheaper and admittedly nicer the locales tend to get, but then you need to decide if you want to drive. I was told by graduate students in the program I'm going into that you'll want to be close to campus your first year. I grew up in Blair County, so State College isn't foreign to me.