irongoat333

Greetings All, So this cycle I applied to a few different programs that are biophysics-related after finishing a HBSc at U of T. My situation is a bit odd (I'm an older student who finished a degree in EE 12 years ago with horrendous grades, did an entire arts-degree worth of credits the bulk of which are pulling down my cGPA heavily, I'm at about 2.95. However, in my 3rd/4th year biophysics I'm standing at a passable 3.4, with a 3.55 in my 4th year courses) I also did a year of research in Fluorescence, and had two professors familiar with my early research efforts endorse my application. So far I got rejected from McMasters EngPhys program, and Guelph's program, after having conversations with prospective supervisors that lead me to believe that my grades were in a competitive range. Guelph gave me some useful feedback, telling me that the issue was primarily that I haven't taken enough biology to do NMR work (and that this, rather than grades was the issue) and I suspect my rejection from McMaster was largely due to my first degree from 12 years ago, even though my recent grades might have been in range. I am worried however that one of my LORs might have been not great - My father was dying during that year, and it really affected my output in the lab. I still finished what was assigned to me and got an A- in the end, but the professor changed his mind on allowing me to continue in his lab into the summer. The prof did say he would write a good letter of recommendation, but I'm worried that this isn't the case. The professor in question won't really answer my inquiries with anything but vague suggestions, and won't recommend any labs or put in a good word for me with colleagues. The rejections so far suck, but I'm not too phased. I want to delay graduation and take advanced versions of some of the important third year courses I got B's in : StatMech, Optics, Computational Physics, etc and pull my 3rd/4th year physics GPA (senior GPA) up to > 3.6, my cumulative up to >3.0 and get more credits in biology. The problem is that I feel like my reputation in research work is bad, and that nothing I do at this point will help me achieve my goal of getting into spectroscopy/optics. More school is expensive, and I haven't gotten much feedback from the graduate programs as to why I am so uncompetitive. I'm worried that its the letter more than the grades, and there's no way to know. Has anyone else found themselves in a similar situation? I'm really at a crossroads, where I want to push forward but am quite discouraged at just how badly things have gone in spite of efforts to overcome. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. C