I'm an international applicant. Any comments/ feedback will be appreciated.
Undergrad Institution: Top 10 school in India Major(s): Biological Sciences (Bachelor's+Master's) Minor(s): Physics GPA in Major: ~9.7/10 Overall GPA: ~9.3/10 Position in Class: Top Type of Student: International male GRE Scores (revised/old version): Q: to be taken in june V: to be taken in june W: to be taken in june B: 97 percentile (Biochem test) TOEFL Total: to be taken in june Research Experience: 1. 4 months project during 1st/2nd summer/winter. Mostly learnt different techniques and helped a grad student in my home institution.
2. 2 months summer project in a different institute (Computational)
3. Working in present lab since 2014 august (including summers) . Working on computational modelling/ simulations on protein folding. Will be working in wet lab on the same topic from june. So ~2.5 years by the time of application. Awards/Honors/Recognitions: 1st rank during 2nd and 3rd year; Summer fellowship in 2nd year; Receiving a national fellowship (KVPY - given for top students pursuing basic sciences) since 1st year. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Will be a TA for undergrad labs next year. Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: Nothing significant Special Bonus Points: Taken lots of grad courses. Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: 2 publications - one first author and one second author from current lab . One more in preparation - may be published before application.
I am working in the same lab for past 2 years (3 years by the time I graduate). Will this provide me any advantage over many short term projects?
My minor GPA is just 7.3/10. I know it is too low and I won't talk about it in my SOP. (It will just show in my transcript but I plan to not delve into it further). Will this affect my application? Applying to Where:
I am planning to apply to some umbrella programs as well as some specific programs( My interest lies in biochemistry/molecular biophysics - protein structure/ folding in particular)
UC Berkeley
University of Chicago
UIUC
WUSTL
University of Maryland
UMass Worcester
UT Southwestern
Stanford
Washington Seattle
Any two out of MIT, Harvard, Yale, Duke, Caltech
This is not my final list. Will add more schools/ remove some.
Any suggestions on my list of universities??