lysine

I see your point. For school in california, UCSD has a student body that contains 1/3 international students in my program, which sort of makes me happy. But when it comes to Berkeley, there's less than 10 %. (And some in UCSF are even lower!) I actually sent email to Wisconsin Madison and they told me that they don't take that much internationals either ( but still more than most california schools). I looked into privates schools, but it seems like not a lot of them have the sort of research I wanted. I guess I just have to look for longer. Though some of the private schools still have funding issues and the amount of internationals they take are comparable to public schools. For UCSD, they take a lot of international student though! So I think it probably won't hurt to try the free preapp I was actually looking at CMB for Wisconsin-madison. So they don't have the exact statistics, but they said there are around 200 international applied, but they ended up giving offers to 5 of them. That freaked me out a little until I saw TakeruK's reply because when I looked again, roughly 20% of the program are internationals. Not too bad. I also take a look into UPenn biology too and they take quite a lot of internationals, but I don't think my research interest align well with any of the professors'. So let say if I take a gap year, do you think I should look for some potential POI's lab and apply to work there? or no? I am sort of against taking a gap year because I spent 5 years to finish my undergraduate study, and I felt like working 4 years for around 20 hours a week is certainly something, but of course there's always better candidate out there.... I guess my concern is, is taking a gap year going to SIGNIFICANTLY improve my chance? Thanks! Though when I looked into it, it looks like they have a rather small student body (correct me if I'm wrong, for some reason that I can't remember I think it is small). I'll definitely look a little bit more into the professors. Yep just like the other said. I also think that another advantage of having a US degree is that when they evaluate your transcript it's gonna be easier (and probably don't need to test for english since the primary teaching language at any US institution is english). Hmm are you talking about their medical school? I'm not sure if they have plant biology program, but I am probably going to apply the biology program in Cornell graduate school First of all thanks a lot!! I'll definitely send you some PM and ask you about your application . By the way did you take a gap year? So again my concern is that IF the gap year is going to be all that useful. It looks like it helped you a lot, but I know some international students who have quite a few publications (well for an undergraduate, even 2-3 sounds a lot to me) and just didn't get in anywhere. I think for plants, things goes much slower than lets say working with bacteria or stuffs. Sometimes you get a project that you'll have to prepare your own pure bred plants and then to do the crosses (Not so horrible for arabidopsis.. but still). One generation could take 12 weeks and there's 52 weeks in a year. There's a chance I won't get any publication or go to any conference after working in a lab for a year. One of the lab tech worked in my old lab, he joined in when the project is almost done and worked for a year. By the time he started his master program, the publication was just submitted. And he's pretty lucky for that too.

I'm currently a junior (almost done with my third year) in a university in the United States, hoping to start a phD program right after graduation. I was initially really excited when I saw how many interesting programs that were out there, now I am just bumped out after contacting the school regarding acceptance rate of international students. Most programs I'm interested in takes only one international students per year, and I feel like that basically means that I won't be admitted. ( And I'm interested in program in plant biology/ bioinformatics that are somewhat related to plant biology, that might be the reason why since most of these programs are relatively small. Here's my stats right now: Undergrad Institution: Highly Ranked Public School, strong bio programs Major(s): Biochemistry Minor(s): Computer Science GPA in Major: 4.0 Overall GPA: 4.0 (I'm a transfer student and before transfer my GPA in a CC was 3.93.) Position in Class: Unknown Type of Student: International GRE Scores (revised/old version): Have not taken yet, will take it in september! Research Experience: approximately 2 years in one lab (one summer full time, ~20 hours during school year; two undergraduate national conference presentation ) one summer full time in another (one second author publication) will have another year in another lab by the time I apply Awards/Honors/Recognitions: 2 summer fellowships to do research at a top five institution Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Will be TA for a year by the time I graduate... Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Nah... Special Bonus Points: Two of my recommenders are really big PI in the field, and the other one is a really young PI that basically went straight to graduate student to PI (who doesn't want to skip the postdoc period... ) I discussed with some postdocs and PIs and right now here's the list I have Stanford- bioscience Berkeley -PMB (1 international student per year) Davis - plant bio UCSD - biological science Yale - biological science (acceptance rate for international student ~ 5%) Cornell UW Madison ( acceptance rate <3%) UNC Chapel Hill Duke Michigan Do any of you have suggestions for schools that are more generous to international students that I should look into? Or alternatively, does getting a master improve my chance of being accepted? Or.... what about looking outside the US? Any input will be appreciated.