jetvermillion

your SOP tells me more about how you feel about career opportunities rather than what your goals are and how your experience is relevant to the program. you touch on some interests but you even openly call it "brain storming", which is also poor taste and word choice. brainstorm by concept means large quantity of ideas. even though you are semi specific in your list, the school still has no idea what you're interested in specifically. your first point and third point might refer to genetics, your second to computational biology, and your last to biosensors and medical devices. you are all over the place also First, you are assuming grad students only know basic programming. Why? And hten you say you can build more elaborate systems. Such as? the way you write this is not in any way related to cell and molecular bio. basically, your SOP lacks focus

I think you should definitely address it, even if it's only in a few sentences. Email the programs person of contact on where you can address it. I am in the same boat. Some have told me exactly where to attach it (as a separate doc somewhere in the app), some have said to put it in my SOP

600 word limit should still be doable. just keep it succinct. family hardships didn't allow you to have a fair shot at focusing on school, so your grades suffered. does it automatically mean you deserve a second chance? no, but you took extension classes and got a 4.0, so it shows you can do well when you're able to focus i'm curious what your GPA is though and what programs you're aiming for. i'm in a similar boat with having an (extremely) low gpa. i know what im going to say for my apps; whether it will be persuasive i have no idea

Profile: - GPA: 2.1, top 20 US university, B.S. in neurobiology - GRE: V 159 Q 162 3 years research in medical imaging 6 publications (1 first author review paper) 1 conference (first author) publication 1 more first author under review Looking to apply to master's programs in bioengineering in a field relevant to my research area I know ranking is not a solid basis, but it gives me a better picture of what schools I should be looking Comments, criticisms appreciated

Thanks for the replies, great points and tips. My LOR and SOP will definitely be key. I've secured two recs from professors in my lab, but the 3rd rec will be key. ideally it will be someone unaffiliated with my research group so it doesn't look like we're just sticking up for each other. edit: what tier do think i should apply to? top 30 or below, or unranked, or all?

I've read many cases where someone explains that they got into a top phd program with a <3.0 undergrad GPA AFTER getting a high gpa at a masters program. But they never explain how they accomplished that transition from undergrad to masters program in the first place. I'm asking because I'm going to be applying to masters programs in biomedical engineering, but have a really poor undergrad gpa. So I'd like to ask how people have achieved this. I have a number of schools in mind already, but want to know what are my chances of getting into them (should i even bother with tier 1 schools or shoot for tier 2 and below..) My background: Major: Neurobiology GPA: 2.1 major, 2.5 overall at a top 20 US university (probably irrelevant with that GPA) - I was essentially a straight C student. I did have As in several major classes, but that's probably trivial amongst the sea of...Cs Research experience: 2.5 years full time in a research lab, with ~ 6 publications, many conference presentations Will be taking the GRE soon Would anyone be able to share their experience? It'd be greatly appreciated