Dan M.

I would find it ideal towards my interests to be involved in a research group that does chemistry in relation to medicine, natural synthesis, etc. My research group currently focuses in the area of natural drug synthesis. I have a very strong organic chemistry background as I basically started doing this research before I even took organic chemistry. The context on my studies lies on the fact that I originally was a biology major, then changed it to biochemistry. Finally, I decided that I wanted to get a degree in chemistry. The original motivation for this decision was for the fact that it would give me an advantage getting into a good grad school so that I could be involved in a research group that does work in the application of natural synthesis. Obviously, I am not so interested in doing biological research as I am currently interested in organic chemistry. So, in a way, I can't think of a more ideal situation to attain so that my career interests have been satisfied in the long scheme of things. So, in context of that, how important is it really to have a strong math/programming background to have the ideal qualifications to do such research? I think that in this post, there is a bias toward thinking of chemistry research by default as necessarily involving lots of computational work., I understand that there is a great deal of tools that can be used for such things as chemical structure determination. However, I feel that there is also a huge difference between inorganic chemistry (maybe even analytical chemistry) and organic chemistry, specifically in the realm of medicine. What are your opinions on this?

Good advice, my degree requires that I take only one computer science class so ill definitely look into that more.

Hello, I have been seeking advice for a while now on how competitive I am as a potential new graduate school applicant. I plan on graduating next year, totaling 5 years as an undergrad with a BS in Chemistry, with the ACS certified degree program. This degree simply requires more Chemistry classes than the normal BS degree. In addition, I am taking all the biochemistry classes my school has to offer and plan on minority in Biology. I expect to have a publication this spring in research, which I have been involved in for almost 2 years now. By the time I graduate I expect to have 2-3 publications based on the progress my research group has attained. My gap is around 3.4-3.5 but I hope to raise it to at least a 3.6-3.7 by the end of my 5th year next spring. I have a moderate amount of volunteer experience and expect to have at least two good recommendation letters from professors I have a good relationship with. I plan on applying to a PhD program in any of the following schools: Madison, Boulder, UCSF and/or UCSD (California), and perhaps Berkeley. These are just my top choices, I plan on researching more schools.