Been lurking in this thread for a while and figured it was time I contributed!
Undergrad Institution: Top 10 private school Major(s): Neuroscience Minor(s): GPA in Major: 3.2 Overall GPA: 3.3 Position in Class: No idea...average/below average?
Master's GPA: 4.0 Type of Student: Domestic Male GRE Scores (revised/old version): Q: 161 V: 164 W: 5.0 B: Research Experience:
- One summer doing Alzheimer's research in Arizona
- One summer doing aging research at the NIA
- One year doing computational biology research at a prominent medical research institution (one conference abstract and poster authorship, middle author)
- One year doing wet lab research on elucidating mechanisms of a cardiomyocyte protein (one conference abstract and poster authorship, second author. Published my MS thesis on this work).
-One year (and counting) industry experience at a large tech company, doing a mix of computational biology, data analysis, and some software development (one conference abstract and poster (middle author), one manuscript (in preparation, middle author), and one possible patent). Awards/Honors/Recognitions: None much other than Dean's List a couple of semesters. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Tutored with a private company for a year, and TA'ed for an upper-division neuro course in undergrad. I was also pre-med for a while during college, so I have some volunteering experiences from that time that may be looked at in a positive light. Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Special Bonus Points: Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: I think my recommendations and SOP were pretty solid. I went with the strategy of getting recommendations from people who knew me well (my manager from my internship, my PI from my Masters, and a professor from my Masters who thought very highly of me) rather than asking for recommendations from bigger-name folks who I had never worked with directly. Not sure how smart that was, but we'll see how it turns out I suppose. For my SOP, I did multiple revisions and worked closely with my brother, who performed his doctorate work at UC-Berkeley, to come up with something I was happy with.
I'm really hoping that my Masters GPA along with my research experience helps overcome my poor undergraduate showing, especially at some of the top programs that might pay more attention to that type of thing. That said, I know that I'm probably a long-shot for most of the programs on my list. Applying to Where:
Stanford - Biomedical Informatics
UCSF - BMS
UC- Berkeley - Comp Bio
UCSD - Bioinformatics
WUSTL - DBBS
U-Washington - Genome Sciences
UCLA - Bioscience
USC - CBG