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Should I do another industry internship or another REU??


Victorious Secret

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Hi,

I am a chemical engineering and biology undergraduate student planning to graduate in 2019. I want to pursue a doctoral degree in some area of cancer biology/drug discovery. I love research that allows me to employ quantitative principles to model the biological system perturbations that arise in disease states, and I would also like to investigate the effects of small molecules and biologics on those systems. Many programs exist in chemical engineering, bioengineering, biology, etc., to pursue such a route, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to make a career out of this work. At this point, I have completed both a six-month industry co-op internship and a 3-month REU. I have the option to do another six-month co-op, or go to school during that semester and do another summer REU (plenty of juicy and highly specialized graduate electives I can potentially take during that additional semester, such as medicinal or quantum chemistry, statistics with R, Python programming, and bioinformatics, to name a few). Any advice? For the summer research, I am particularly interested in the Amgen Scholars Program, if I can get in. It seems to be exactly what I am looking for. If I did an industrial internship it would probably be in drug discovery, if I could get one, or another bioprocess engineering position. Any other suggestions are welcome as well. Stats below:

Undergrad Institution: mid-tier, large public university
Major(s):  Chemical Engineering (emphasis in Bioengineering) and Biology (emphasis in Biotechnology)
Minor(s):  Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering (mostly used graduate courses to complete these)
GPA in Majors:  3.96
Overall GPA:  3.7 (due to poor initial showing in college 15 years ago; returned to school in 2013 and GPA is 3.9 over last 4 years)
Position in Class: top 5% of current institution
Type of Student: Domestic white male, non-traditional, first-gen college student, below poverty line

GRE Scores (revised/old version): (estimates based on practice exam)
Q: 164
V:  168
W:  5.0
B:  Not going to take 


Research Experience: 

4 overlapping years, spread across 4 faculty labs. Mix of bio/chemical engineering and chemical biology.

REU in cancer bioengineering/modeling -> led to a national conference presentation and first author publication.

1 year pharmaceutical powder process modeling/simulation for NIH-funded project

1 year honors fellowship, mammalian cell culture engineering/analysis. -> led to symposium presentation

3 years cell/bioengineering in nano and tissue culture lab. -> 2 presentations and 2 publications, one first author review, one second author experimental paper in high IF journal

1 semester in chemical biology, included computational modeling -> led to national conference presentation

Yearlong Honors Research and Thesis forthcoming during senior year

(another REU leading to a publication would really go nicely here)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:

Goldwater Scholar, Honors College, several university scholarships, Dean's List, Honor Societies: Tau Beta Pi, Omicron Delta Kappa, Omega Chi Epsilon

Pertinent Activities or Jobs

I founded and am director of an NGO that designs, validates, and builds medium-scale (500L-2500L) sustainable biodigesters in developing nations. My organization has won various local innovation and engineering awards and raised large sums from various sources. 4 Grants total. Currently in an iterative experimental design/evaluation process at a farm near my campus, and looking to apply for EPA P3 funding in the next fiscal year.

6-month Engineering R&D internship at Pfizer

Vice President and Secretary of two engineering student chapters on campus

ChemE Car Design Team for AIChE Student Chapter

Summer Internship Designing Fuel Handling Devices

Peer Tutor in chemical engineering and biology

Peer Mentor

My jobs have been mostly research-based in faculty labs, aside from some professional tutoring, web design, retail, and manual labor work.


Special Bonus Points: 

Glowing LOR's, but not from particularly renown faculty

I have earned three online verified Coursera specializations (around 5-6 courses each): Statistics with R, Systems Biology and Biotechnology, and Python Programming (Did this mostly for personal enrichment, is there any value in mentioning this on applications?)

I will have taken between 14 and 16 graduate courses before I graduate, in math, physics, chemistry, chemical engineering, and biology, with a 4.0 across the board so far

I am a strong in-person interviewer 


Applying to Where: (my interests are based mostly on faculty fit; I have already researched which U's allow you to apply to multiple departments)

MIT (chemical engineering, bioengineering, biology)

Harvard (chemical biology, systems biology, bioengineering)

Stanford (Either ChemEng or chemical and systems biology)

Berkeley (chemical engineering)

Caltech (chemical engineering)

Georgia Tech (chemical and biomedical engineering)

UCSD (bioengineering)

UCSF (CCB)

Tri-Institutional Program in Chemical Biology

Rockefeller

Princeton (chemical engineering)

UW-Madison (chemical engineering)

UMinnesota (chemical engineering)

UTAustin (chemical engineering)

Delaware (chemical engineering)

 

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