Undergrad Institution: International school (world 28th in CS, 100-200 in life sciences, 49 overall in QS ranking) Major(s): Cell and molecular biology Minor(s): N/A GPA in Major: 3.491 Overall GPA: 3.281 Position in Class: not sure, probably upper-half; graduated with second upper-class honor (HK system, similar to UK's).
Graduate Institution: the same school as undergraduate school Major(s): M. Phil (2-year research degree, similar to first 2 year in PhD) in computer science and engineering, thesis project is on bioinformatics Overall GPA: 3.694
Type of Student: International male (quite a number of programs say that they do not have enough funding to cover tuition for international students....)
GRE Scores (revised/old version): Q: 157
V: 169
W: 3.5
TOEFL
Total: 109
Research Experience:
Equivalent 50 months full-time research (some application form require that by converting part-time experience to full-time ones), mostly in bioinformatics (multi-omics & method development)
7 projects listed on CV.
3 in undergrad, two of which are wet-lab, another is multi-omics bioinformatics study. One wet-lab project yield in a 4th authorship in PNAS (direct submission); Been able to do some higher-level experiments in undergrad, for example, confocal microscopy, Y2H and FRET
4 in postgrad: 3 manuscripts in prep, one is the thesis project which should be a 1st-authorship and hopefully on a prestigious journal (but unfortunately, I'm not able to get it published now apparently); another one of the 3 should be a co-first if things work smoothly.
The thesis project is luckily a hot open question in the field. Quite a number of my PI-of-interests are working on the same problem using various approaches. A side collaborative-project (which I'm not the major working force) yields another 4th-authorship on a specialized biology journal (if > 20)
LORs
Got one letter from my thesis advisor, another two from two PI-in-collaboration in my thesis project (h-index 36, 124, 36 respectively). All should be strong as our relationship is quite good generally. My advisor might or might not have connections with faculties I listed as interested, for some of them are in the same ENCODE project.
SOP
No idea whether I nailed it or not...
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: (Within your school or outside?) - Received university entrance scholarship
- Another scholarship that covers half of my undergraduate tuition fees
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: (Such as tutor, TA, SPS officer etc...) - TA for a 3000-level CS course, >100 students, has lab session and tutorial courses
- RA in current research lab.
Applying to Where:
UCSD: BISB, Princeton QCB, Harvard BIG, MIT CSBi, WashU DBBS-CSB, UW Genome Sciences
I contacted 4 profs in UCSD and Princeton, but only get 1 reply from UCSD. The email reads that he is impressed but still I need to pass the committee first. So I guess that may not be too helpful for me to get the interview?