DeadSamurai Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 I am an international student in the final year of my masters in Chemical Biology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I want to pursue a PhD after this but can't decide on where to apply. I have 315 in GRE, 112 in TOEFL and currently doing a research rotation at the biochemistry department working on stress induced gene expression. In my undergrad (Genetic Engineering) I maintained a 9.1 on a scale of 10 but I don't have a publication to my name. I want to pursue a PhD in the field of either molecular and cellular biology or human genetics. I was hoping I could get some recommendations on universities I should apply to, I have to apply this fall so I am totally freaking out. Please do help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rising_star Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 Where you should apply depends entirely on your specific research interests and who is doing that research. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadSamurai Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 Ok, so my other question then is if more than one university is performing the research how do I know which universities are better? Does the university rank apply or should I look at some other detail? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylogician Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 First of all, you want to apply to more than one university. The numbers vary but for starters find yourself at least 5, and perhaps up to 10 potential schools. Most people don't get into every school they apply to, and it's good to have options. Criteria you might want to look at include: potential advisors in your subfield, resources, placement rate, stipend, climate; there are others, and you might not care about all of these. The most important thing is to have a good advisor, which means someone who can support your research and preferably is at least somewhat famous and can help you get a job when you graduate. Alternatively, if the person you want to work with most is junior, that can work too but then you want to make sure that there are senior people around who you can have on your committee. Official rankings don't matter much because they aren't based on criteria that would matter for graduate school selection. This is a difficult process and you have to do your own legwork. Consult your current professors, read up on schools' websites, look at recent publications in the top journals and conferences in your field to see who is up and coming. It takes time and no one can (or will) do it for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TakeruK Posted October 1, 2015 Share Posted October 1, 2015 In addition to the advice above, a few more thoughts:1. Ideally, there would be tons of universities that do the research you want to do! If there was only one, that means the field is so niche that you will have a hard time finding people willing to hire you for your work!2. Looking at journals and conferences can also tell you about the quality of the work produced by the professors' graduate students. Take a look at the kind of work that their students are presenting and writing. Is it what you want to be doing? Are students leading projects or are they just cogs in a machine? Are students publishing more/less than the norm in your field? Are their students getting the opportunities to travel and present?3. As fuzzy also alluded to, try to find their students that graduated in the last 5-10 years and find out where they are now. If the professor's website or CV does not list former students, you can probably figure out who are the old grad students by looking at the author lists of conferences and journal articles from 5-10 years ago. See where these people are now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Sun Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 A-ha! Fancy meeting you here! I guess because people here are from various programs, they couldn't name any specific institute that would be a best fit for you (or us). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rising_star Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Ok, so my other question then is if more than one university is performing the research how do I know which universities are better? Does the university rank apply or should I look at some other detail?Why are you so obsessed with university rank? If the top-ranked universities aren't doing the research you want to do, then it's a waste of your time to go there. knp 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadSamurai Posted October 7, 2015 Author Share Posted October 7, 2015 A-ha! Fancy meeting you here! I guess because people here are from various programs, they couldn't name any specific institute that would be a best fit for you (or us). yeah I know right but this really helped... I know have a better idea of what to do now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadSamurai Posted October 7, 2015 Author Share Posted October 7, 2015 Why are you so obsessed with university rank? If the top-ranked universities aren't doing the research you want to do, then it's a waste of your time to go there.its not that I'm obsessed with it... It's just to get an idea of how to differentiate them when I'm applying... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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