kilomole

UT Southwestern accepts a fair amount of international students every year. If you are interested in research that overlaps physical and biological sciences, there are quite a lot of strong labs here. This past year of graduate class consists of 50% international students. Your undergrad GPA looks great; however, many of the top 10 programs you are applying to accepts a very small percentile of international students (maybe at most 3-4 international students per 40-50 people class size). A 4.0 GPA is quite common among its applicant pools; publication as a first author is what normally set an excellent applicant from the rest. You may want to apply for an O.P.T. on student visa and do 1-2 years of research assistantship at a school of your liking before applying for its PhD programs. During your R.A., build a solid relationship with your P.I. and try to get at least a significant publication out; this will significantly increase your chances.

An online PhD degree in experimental sciences sounds extremely fishy to me.

Hi guys, I am just wondering is it common these days for undergraduate students in biology/chemistry to publish work as first-authored papers in peer-reviewer journals (BMC, pLoS etc.)? Any of you here has done so yourself? Did you do your work in a research university or SLAC? How big of a role did your PI play in helping you publish? Thanks! kilomole

Hey RegulationNation, I hate to be a bad news bearer, but I would have to say almost all the schools on your list are very high-reach. I go to UTSW that you listed up there, and I would say most of my class have a reasonable GPA. Most graduate schools simply will not accept anyone w/ GPA lower than 3.0 as a policy (which is very stupid imo), for some of the programs you listed up there, the average GPA of applicants is much much higher than that. Having publications almost always certainly help (I think there is only one or two in my class who have had any sort of publications). For many of the schools you listed, you would have to demonstrate exceptional research ability in your publications (on very big journal as a first author) to justify your admission over other competitive candidates. I think a good way to overcome your GPA issue is to either do a MS and up your GPA while doing more research work, or try to convince faculty in your target school to admit you (this will probably take someone other than you to do the convincing). I think doing a PhD or masters at your current school will not be a bad idea if you like its environment and faculty's research given your current PI can provide significant help in getting you in. Hope this was helpful!

Thanks for the response! I just wasn't so sure about UTSW as I haven't heard many people talk about it here. But from my experience, they seem to have a lot of young faculty doing great research. Immunologist, I think I met that friend of yours during my interview weekend! She was super nice and helpful.

Hi guys, I have been a longtime lurker here. I recently heard back from all my offers, and I would like to hear some opinions on some of the programs. I am interested in heavy basic science research topics (e.g. membrane trafficking and organization) with a heavy leaning towards biochemistry. I got accepted to: Columbia Integrated Program in CMB, Yale BBS MCGD, UTSW, and Baylor's. I have pretty much ruled out Bayor at this point. It's a great program but I didn't find any particular researcher whose project interested me. I have also decided not to go Yale at this point due to personal reasons. So it comes down to Columbia or UTSW. I encountered many great researchers at UTSW. I think they're doing projects in areas I am very interested in. I already know a few researchers there in the field, so I have no doubt I will find an excellent PI to work with. I also really liked the environment down there. People seem to be down to earth and more modest. I also met many researchers at Columbia whose work interested me greatly, and the topics tend to be more diverse. Although their research is not in the area I am familiar with, I see more opportunities to branch out and try different research topics there. I just wonder how important is the recognition of your PhD institute once you graduate? I plan on pursuing academia, so I'd really like to continue postdoc at a top notch research institute after graduation. I understand that UTSW is rising fast in basic science research, but it probably isn't as recognizable as Columbia or some of the other top biomedical research institutes. I would also like to hear what people have to say about the two programs at UTSW and Columbia. Thanks !