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And that's if they decide to interview you. Guess what they usually use to decide whether to interview people or even read their SOP at the programs that receive many applications?

Vene, those are exceptions to the rule rather than the rule. At the very least, scores like that warrant adding several more programs to your list that are not quite so competitive.

Color me cynical, but you got in the first round you tried; I didn't. GPA is frequently used as a first-round cut. I prefer to help people hedge their bets. When I got 'go as long as you want!' advice, I came out with nowhere to go this fall, and as I said, Octopus28 does have very good research experience, but Octo's MS GPA is barely better than my undergrad GPA. Let's revisit Octopus28's GPA and GREs, shall we? GPA in Major (undergrad): ~2.8 (struggled when transferring from a small community college) GPA in Major (Masters): 3.7 (Biotech MS at a small state university) Overall GPA: ~3.0 (unsure how community college fits into this) Position in Class: Average Type of Student: Domestic Male GRE Scores (revised version): Q: 167 V: 155 W: not yet available B: Does this look like someone who's going to get admitted to UCSF, University of Washington, Cornell, or UCLA? Does it? The answer is no, the 2.8-3.0 undergrad GPA, even though the MS GPA is 3.7, and the low verbal score will work against Octopus28.

There are a lot of biology graduate programs that don't have application fees. If you're short on cash, consider these graduate programs. (Mods, please sticky.) I'll compile a list. Vanderbilt University - All programs Washington University in St. Louis (WashU/WUSTL) - not sure which programs Post some and I'll edit this list .

I'll make a post on the forum.

Would it be useful for the forum in general to collect a list of biosciences programs which have no application fee? (There are GRE and transcript fees, of course, but no application fee is good)

The huge reach schools cost more than $100 a piece to apply to. I'd reconsider that. I'm re-applying; this time only ONE of the schools costs more than $100 to apply to.

You're doing the same thing I did last time, and that didn't get me in anywhere and I have a better GPA. Pick two reach schools and throw out the others. Repopulate your list with more realistic schools. Apply to 10.

1) Backward as @#$% 2) Not even in the top 20 countries in scientific output http://www.openaccessweek.org/profiles/blogs/the-top-20-countries-for-scientific-output

If a school does not give concrete stipend data and only says that their stipend is "competitive", does that mean that it sucks?

So if you decide to convert a 4.06/5 to an n out of 4, that equals a 3.24, actually, which is not a terribly competitive GPA without considerable research to back it up. You have quite a bit of research experience in your favor. Out of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and WUSTL, I suggest you pick two and replace two with more realistic schools. The fact that your choice of schools was greatly influenced by ranking is a bad sign. You need to pick based on the people doing what you want at each school. They will not accept you if you are not a good fit. Avoid Saudi Arabia like the plague.

Berkeley seems to have a perpetual problem with paying its students enough.

I'm thinking of eliminating all the UC schools. I hear bad things about how they treat PhD students.

You know what sucks? I have a list of a lot of schools right now. I have to narrow it down to 10. The bolded schools are the ones I absolutely am applying to. UVA Neuro, Stanford Bio, UC Davis Neuro, OHSU Neuro, Carnegie Mellon Bio, Pittsburgh Neuro, Florida Neuro, Emory Neuro, UC Irvine Neuro, Duke Neuro, UNC Chapel Hill Neuro, UT Houston Genes and Development, Michigan PIBS, UT Southwestern Neuro, NIH/JHU GPP, Berkeley MCB, University of Washington MCB, USC Neuro, Case Western Neuro I need to eliminate all but 5 of the remaining schools. It is hard.

Very early sort of 'good news', maybe, but I have a Skype chat scheduled with a prospective PI across the pond at Cambridge! Over there you're supposed to talk to the PI first and then they tell you to apply.

If kravity13 doesn't touch on it, they might not consider kravity13 at all.

Adcoms are also made up of people with their own biases, and being educated in neuroscience doesn't mean an adcom's going to lose its biases. The adcom will look at your application and wonder if they're making a huge gamble on you, if you're likely to get depressed again, and if you're just not going to be a good person to expend resources on. There's no way, once you mention the D word, to differentiate 'depressed because of poopy times in college' from 'depressed because of an organic, chronic, ongoing problem with brain chemistry that has nothing to do with the environment'. Regardless of whether you've been or are being treated, and whether it was successful, there is a not-insignificant risk that they will think of you as a loose cannon. This is probably the most uncharitable possible interpretation, but from what I've heard, it is still persistent. I have a relative who has a coworker who went out with her depression; she lost a lot of assignments, got dinged otherwise jobwise, and finally left because she got fed up. And consider they may be charitable towards Average Jane or Joe on the street, but any lingering bias may come out more strongly when they're recruiting grad students, who they will hold to higher standards. Mental illness is mental illness, and mental illness, as anyone in neuroscience knows, can make people do some supremely unproductive, stupid, self-defeating, sometimes hurtful stuff, which WILL anger the boss of a mentally ill person to at least some extent. You will HAVE to lie if you want an offer. I know I'm being this thread's perpetual Negativity Spouter here, but sometimes I think thegradcafe paints a rosier picture of admissions than may be warranted.

By 'umbrella programs', I mean programs labeled things like 'interdisciplinary biology' or 'program in biomedical sciences' or 'biological and biomedical sciences' (similar to Harvard BBS). They usually have faculty from most of the biological departments on campus. You apply to the advisor(s), not the school, of course. I understand you want to apply places with an emphasis on psychiatric genetics, but I'm fairly sure the list is not limited to those. I would suggest you talk to your advisor, be very clear that a 3.0 is not likely to be competitive at many of these places (GPA is often used as an initial way to 'cull the herd'), and ask them about schools that are not top 10s in the field that nonetheless are still strong in psychiatric genetics.

I'm gonna go ahead here and say that out of UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, UW Neuro (admits only 6 people a year out of... 150 or so applicants), WashU, Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, pick two. I didn't even get an interview at Columbia, Harvard, or UCSD, and I have a 3.69 GPA (I graduated in May), 163Q/167V/4.0A, 3 summers of research, a poster presentation, an oral presentation, and a second-author publication. Also, apply to as many umbrella programs as you can that still have the neuroscience professors that you want to work with. They're less competitive than the neuroscience programs.

You know what I'm concerned about: How the hell do people get things like Fulbrights and NSF grants? Because you have to have actual projects for some of these things. Half of them seem IMPOSSIBLE.

Man, all of those are a crapshoot for everybody. Ever tried Michigan or UT Houston or something?

Generally, your GPA in your major is calculated by calculating the GPA using only courses listed in that department. However, taking the maximum possible number of credits each semester, especially if it includes courses not related to your major, program, or degree requirements, is really really bad time management. It doesn't matter if it's one-price-fits-all. You only take what you can manage. What do you think is going through the adcom's mind here? 'Look at all these extra courses BBQ took... that brought down his/her GPA.'

Your GPA will cost you. A lot. Poor grade inflation is no excuse; I come from a school where grade inflation is virtually nonexistent and managed a 3.69. I suggest you trim your reach tier, tell your relatives to knock it off wrt MIT and Harvard and pick two of the schools on that list that have people that you actually want to work with (and those are reach schools for people with better GPAs and GREs than you have), and expand your likely tier. UCSD is reach tier. U of Washington neuro admits very few people a year, so may be considered reach tier. U of Arizona is highly biased toward U of Arizona graduates (I interviewed there).

Precisely. I even tried to explain that I wasn't closed-minded about my research interests, but I still got told 'look, we can't find anyone who seems to fit well with you' despite the fact that at least from my perspective several people did, and I suspect that I was being overly specific, especially with respect to model organisms; the ones that I want to study most as an independent investigator are poorly established and still under considerable development (sequencing a representative genome is still in the works) and I will ultimately end up playing a part in establishing them as a model, probably, but for graduate school, I absolutely will have to work on different organisms, and I may not even be able to do a 100% compatible topic with my interests because evo-devo neurobiology is a very young field and investigated by very few people. Combined with the fact that not every person you want to work with will be able to take a new trainee on, finding a research mentor as far as I can tell is not without getting a hard dose of NIH/NSF-funded reality at times. I'm almost positive I sound like a major downer here but I might as well toss in the second-time-applicant perspective. Because most non-first-time applicants everyone is hearing from in this thread so far have already gotten the success; mine is on its way.

Also, what I was told was that you can't be overly specific about your research interests. You have to be a LITTLE vague, but not overly so. I was told my interests were a little TOO well developed, last time. Also, a point that I think may be being neglected here is that EVERYBODY with great records is applying to these top places.