alanfv91

Hey guys! I will be attending UC Davis for graduate school this coming Fall, and I would like to know a little bit about the traffic in the Davis/Sacramento area? I'm coming from the Orange County area, so I've had my fair share of bad commuter traffic - especially the drive from the 405 back home every weekday. Is the freeway rush hour traffic usually something like a gridlock, or is it more of a slowed down pace where everybody is going about 20-40 mph? I will be commuting between my on-campus housing and the Shriners Hospital in Sacramento during the weekdays and I would like some insight on how bad traffic can get. Thanks in advance!

For the schools you are thinking about applying to, you can try the same schools I did. I applied to mostly immunology programs at UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UCSD, UCSF, Scripps, University of Washington, University of Minnesota, University of Texas Medical Branch, UT Southwestern, MD Anderson Cancer Center at Houston, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard. The last two schools were definitely my reach schools, but if the finances allow you to, I would apply to those schools. I wouldn't worry too much about your GPA. I actually have a GPA that's very close to what you have too, and I'll be attending the Immunology program at UC Davis in Fall 2014. What I think matters a lot more is your laboratory and research experience. I say you should definitely stay in your lab and get as much research experience and learn as many things as you can before you apply for the upcoming cycle. If you do stay in the lab, your letters of recommendation from your PI should get a nice boost since you will be working there for a longer time, and your PI will have a better idea of how you work and succeed in graduate school. The bottom line is, don't worry too much about your academic stats - as long as you get decent GRE scores in the future and continue working in the lab, you should be able to get into a Ph.D program! Just maintain your diligence, persevere, and hopefully the admissions committee will see that in you. Good luck!

To answer the main topic at hand: I actually applied for Ph.D programs for Fall 2013, and I got close to getting some admits but got rejected by the schools post-interview. That happened when I was finishing up my undergraduate studies. The bad thing was that my GPA wasn't stellar, and neither were my GRE scores. However, I managed to apply again to more schools this cycle, and I actually got accepted to a couple of the schools I applied to (yay!). I would say the one thing that really boosted up my applications this cycle was my work/research experience. I decided to stay another year in my undergraduate research lab to work as a lab manager/research associate. I do have to say that taking another year of research really helped me out since I learned some new techniques that are definitely relevant to what I will be doing in graduate school in the coming Fall. In addition, that extra year helped my letters of recommendation since my PI had more to write about. Furthermore, I had some teaching experience in two different ways. First, I acted as an "undergraduate supervisor" in the lab - meaning that I helped undergrads with their experiments as well as advising them on what to do. Second, I had another part-time job as a teacher at a local learning center where I tutored some high school students in various science subjects such as physics, chemistry, and biology. Since I had an extra year to work, I believe the admissions committee saw the effort I took to improving my applications, and they also saw how I supported my career goals to become an academic in my SOP due to my teaching experience. In terms of completing my application, I had professors, relatives, and friends review and give suggestions on what they thought about my SOP, research experience, and other writing samples. I also found talking to current graduate students in my lab or in prospective programs to be very helpful as well. When time permitted, I would take some time out during the meetings with my PI to get some additional advice on what should be emphasized in my applications. Finally, on my SOP, I used some space to explain some of the discrepancies on my academic record without giving any excuses. I was concise with my wording as to make a long story short for the admissions committee. Everything else on my application was pretty straightforward; I tried to answer each question that was asked to the best of my knowledge. I hope this helps, and good luck to whoever is applying next year!

Thanks! Congrats on your acceptance as well! I really hope you end up loving the school and program you will be attending.

Oh it's cool - I'm sure he's miserable as he is and where he is right now

I know this is a little late, but here we go... I applied to an overall of 14 graduate programs, all mostly immunology since I come from a strong immunology background from UC Irvine. I only received two interview invitations which were from UTMB BMB, and UC Davis Immunology. I was accepted to UTMB, and waitlisted at UC Davis post-interview. My obvious choice was to go to UC Davis since their program was a much better fit when compared to that of UTMB. Furthermore, I also wanted to attend UC Davis because one of my friends who was working in my undergraduate lab was a first-year in that program (and coincidentally she was also my student host at the Davis interview!). I actually didn't receive the acceptance from UCD until the day before the April 15 deadline, and by then I had already taken the offer from UTMB. Luckily, I was able to rescind my acceptance from UTMB without any hard feelings (I hope somebody else was able to receive my offer though!). To be honest, I'm quite amazed at how I was able to make it into a rather selective program at UCD; I don't have the greatest of stats (3.096 GPA for example), but knowing that I was able to compete with people from UCSD, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSF was a nice morale booster. I'm sure a lot of those people I met at the interviews have chosen to attend a program they feel is better suited for them, and they really deserve it. While it wasn't your top choice, it was definitely up there on my list. Good luck to you guys - I'm sure you'll be happy and will succeed in the program you are ending up at!