Bioenchilada

I feel that a lot of adcoms don't look at the actual CV but rather focus on your SOP and LORs. The only way they'll actually know you receiver highest honors would be if you mentioned it in the essay. Having an honors thesis helps, but a lot of people do those, have 3+ years of research experience, and have great numbers! I'd say your best shot is to work on getting amazing letters of recommendation by any means necessary and getting the best scores possible on the general AND subject GRE. Doing so might then give you a good chance of getting into a top program. Alternatively, you could apply this season to see how things go, but I'd suggest applying to a wide range programs.

Lol I really need to stop posting when I'm tired, so many errors. Your** It's not like anyone will question why**

I mean, there's not really much you can do about it, honestly. If you're school is as good as you say and you like your program, you'll be fine. It's not like anyone will question about why you decided to stay anyway. If this happens, you can always make something up lol

Your overal profile is impressive and you're well aware of your weaknesses and strengths. Your only actual weakness is your GPA, but you compensate for it with experience, LORs, and diversity in your academics. I think your list is also realitisic. You'll definitely get interviews in most of them. By the way, do you go to UM?

Yeah, it's either summer internships or by being a tech. I'd suggest applying to tech positions after graduating in order to get the additional experience, as suggested by the other posters.

I think that you're applying to too many top programs and your stats are really not up to par with the caliber of the programs. You don't need a publication to get into those schools, but you'd benefit from getting more experience. Have you taken a lot of upper level biology courses? Because not doing so could hurt you in admissions since your background is Chemistry. Of course, this changes if you plan to do biochem. Your GPA is not bad by any means, but it'd be average at best for the programs you're applying to. Your rec letters would also probs not help a lot since you only have one from a PI. In my opinion, I think that either you apply to a broader range of schools, or you work on strengthening your profile. I really don't know how international admissions work, but I've heard it's typically significantly more competitive.

Graduate level classes, or very high upper level undergrad courses. Of course, they can cause a positive or negative impression based on how you did.

Averages depend on the types of school the applicant is applying to. Overall, that GPA is great, but it won't truly set him/her apart. The types of classes the applicant took might cause an impression though.

For how long have you done research? Who is writing your rec letters? Bioengineering and Pharmacology are typically programs that have different requirements and averages, so make sure you are eligible to apply. In terms of publications, those are not really needed. I think you should cut your list in half and only pick the schools you would truly be content with going to. There is no such thing as a "safetu" school for graduate studies since your professional training is at stake and you should choose places where you'll be satisfied with the quality of the research, and the environment.

So, only one of your rec letters comes from a research mentor? (I sent you a PM- by the way)

How many years of experience do you have? This is more important than your GRE and your GPA. Also, who's writing your letters of recommendation? Connections will be helpful if the person knows people in the admissions committee or is very well known.

Though I agree with most of your post, I strongly disagree with your statement that being in a lab for less than a year and moving around will hurt you. Adcoms LOVE diversity in your CV, it was brought up in all of my interviews. I worked in 4 different labs. Two of those were for 3 semesters, and the others were from internships. I only got rec letters from the latter two. The third one was from a professor that I also did research with, but it was not "wet-lab" stuff.

Your post made me preach. You can also add the fact that their dataset is basically incomplete. A lot of the specialties within their rankings have less than 10 schools.

I don't think your GRE invalidates an application, per se. Of course, with a lower GPA, the GRE becomes more important, but I don't think yours was bad. Also, what's your major GPA? Who wrote you rec letters? And, did a lot of people look at your SOP?

It's also sad because a lot of people that apply purely for ranking end up getting rejected anyway because they can't effevtively explain why they want to go there.

I mean, it really depends on the schools you're applying to and the strength of your overall package. If the only "subpar" part of your app is your GRE and the rest is stellar, you can probably get away with a score in the mid-150s because the test is not THAT important. However, if you have a low GPA, your rec letters are meh, or you're lacking on to research side, itmll probably be to the best interest of the applicant to draw attention to his scores in a positive fashion (160+ and probably even 80th percentile+ subject tests)

I'm actually starting my first rotation during the summer haha In terms of picking your rotations, I just took a second look through the faculty member list and met up with them during my campus revisit to discuss rotation prjects and expectations. I think that even in the fall semester, most schools have a period of time where you just meet with people to talk about joining their labs.

I definitely agree with this. The previous "argument" about rankings were not meant to tell future applicants to just go with it based on that. It was purely informative, just so they used reliable sources if ranking was of any relevance to them. Besides fit with the particular program, I think it's good to have an idea of how much funding there is available because this can sometimes affect progress and productivity. Student happiness is also important, but that's hard to gauge until the interview haha

I'm not questioning the prestige of my school, at all. haha I'm not saying that US News is not reliable at all, but there are WAY better ranking metrics for graduate programs available which should be used instead of neglected, as you keep doing. Like, you fail to even fact check or look up information about what I'm arguing. You keep saying that X school is less/better than the other without using the best tools and instead relying on places that don't even bother to even compare more than 10 schools for most biology specialties. I just want future applicants that are concerned about ranking and the quality and strength of their desired Ph.D program to use the most reliable sources available, which would be funding and the National Research Council.

The only reason I'm frustrated is because you're coming off as entitled and you don't even bother to look up the things I'm talking about nor address most of points that I state. I'm not going to write a page long post about NRC v. US News because that will not only be time-consuming, but it's also likely that you'll nitpick and just reply to the silliest discrepancy. The fact that you're so confident about the reliability of US News makes it even more annoying that you're saying that the school I am attending is FAR inferior to others, and is not a Top 10. Educate yourself, please. Over and Out.

Okay, I disagree with you in that this person needs to "stay away" from highly competitive programs. I think he has a pretty good shot if the rest of his profile is on par, which it definitely is.

Also, it's true that two candidates might have different likelihoods to get into a program. The candidate that we're discussing has great credentials, that is not in question. However, he/she is an international students, which will typically make admission more difficult, even with great credentials. What I'm saying is that top 10 schools are already difficult enough for domestic students, even if they have a 4.0, perfect GREs, and great rec letters. Thus, it will be even more difficult for an international student. Even if a candidate has a higher chance of getting into a top 3 school for x/y reason, the overall likelihood of admission is still low because of intense competition.

It's relevant because there are many schools, like UPenn, that have GRADUATE (Ph.D) programs within their graduate schools AND their medical schools, and they may be ranked differently. Let me just point out that you're coming off as very condescending when posting here. The National Research Council is more reliable independent of whether or not Penn is ranked higher, I don't know why you keep implying that I'm biased for one reason or another. This is because it is simply a more sophisticated data set that is constructed from collecting data over a time period of 10 years, more or less. Not only this, but it is involved with the National Academy of Sciences to some extent, and their rankings are constructed using statistics (i.e regression analysis) as well as surveys, unlike US News. Ph.D.org uses NRC data. If you actually put some effort into looking things up rather than running your mouth, you could compare and contrast the difference of opinion when addressing the NRC and US News, especially for graduate study. While one is regarded as the "golden standard" for ranking systems, the other is continuously under scrutiny. In fact, US News is so flawed that it doesn't even publish an extensive list on each of the individual specialties, which is more important for graduate study than the "general ranking". FYI, Penn is most definitely in the top 10 for the following fields/specialtes: Immunology and Infectious Disease, Cell and Molecular Biology, Cancer Biology, Gene Therapy and Vaccines, etc..

US News is not the most accurate ranking system out there. NRC and Ph.D.org + funding sources are far more reliable. You're right Penn Biology ( the program with the grad school and the one you applied to) is not the strongest program; however, the program he is talking about IS within the Perelman School of medicine, which ranked #3 for research, if going by US News. Penn's biomedical research and medical school, has a better reputation than UChicago and WUSTL. Like, I'd honestly look for reputable sources before starting a rankings argument lol In conclusion, your statement that WUSTL and UChicago are "way ahead" of Penn is simply erroneous. They're either comparable, or Penn has a better biochemistry program. (Also, selectiveness does not equal better. UChicago's Cancer Biology program was more selective than Penn's but by no means better.)

Lol your denominations of what safety schools are is a bit triggering, not because I'm going to UPenn, but because I disagree with how you classified the schools. Like, UC-Berkeley has a better biochem program than Harvard and is usually tied with MIT, and you referred to it as achievable. I think that MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley are extremely hard schools to get into, regardless of your credentials. Also, UPenn's program is more competitive, and I believe more selective than UChicago's, so I wouldn't classify it a safety. Labeling an Ivy League school a safety is simply misleading because they tend to have very strong and competitive programs in a wide range of fields. Like, if I were to redo your list, I'd say that that the only safety school is Washington Seattle, or even UChicago as well. UPenn and UIUC are top 15 programs, so they should be classified as "match" school along with WUSTL. The other ones are definitely reach schools.