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Josh1964

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    How are other international students applicant doing this round

    in Biology

    Posted

    2 hours ago, thinhtran said:

    I'm an international student wrapping up my MSc in Canada -- have had some success this season with an offer from GSK as well as interviews at Weill Cornell and NYU. I have ~5 years total of research experience in both wet and dry lab, a few manuscripts in preparation, one second-author submitted paper, and LoRs from research advisors who are quite well-known in their fields. My grad and undergrad GPAs are ~3.9/4.0. To be honest I think it's a combination of research fit (lots of PIs doing what I wanted to do in all schools I applied to), LoRs and some luck that got me this far. Don't be disheartened yet! I've heard it's been a very competitive season so far for all programs and sometimes whether you get invited for interviews or not boiled down to luck. You can still ace your UConn interview, and in the worst case, a few more years as a tech/RA to learn new techniques and get published will help you tremendously when you apply later. Even though many programs have limited funding for int'l students (the UCs for example), some others don't really care about our citizenship status (e.g. most NYC schools), so you do have options. Best of luck!

    I have heard NYC schools are not that friendly towards international students but I could be wrong. I mostly apply for umbrella program with a concentration for developmental bio. I did my undergrad and master mostly in biophysics but I'm really interested in developmental. I'm now applying for jobs it's just so tiring like a never-ending process of applications. 

    How are other international students applicant doing this round

    in Biology

    Posted

    9 hours ago, zuska said:

    Hi there, I am also an international student and I got my bachelor degree in the US. My undergrad GPA is 3.76 and I am also currently in a masters program (in Europe), I have around 3 years of research experience and I am a co-author on two papers. I think part of the problem may be your choice of programs, lot of them are quite fancy :P They have so many applicants to choose from that you can hardly be sure you will get in, I think you also need a bit of luck... I have also selected many high profile programs, but my previous supervisor advised me to only select a couple and add some "safety" schools. I know nobody wants to end up in their safety school, but I do agree it is important especially for international students to have some back up options.  

    Also 11 applications in 3 days sounds really fast to me. Perhaps it is just me being slow, but it took me several days to apply to my 5 programs and most of that time was actually spent on personal statement (which I really really hated to write), since that needs to be tailored for each program. I have already heard from 4 out of 5 programs and it looks promising, but no official admission yet. But the institutions to which I applied are lot less known I think.

    I think in my case it was very helpful that I have reached out to faculty members. Although I am applying for biomedical sciences in general, I know I want to continue with vascular biology and so I contacted faculty working on such topics. The admissions people seemed to like it a lot. 

    Did the programs that declined you also give some explanation? 

    Not really. They are pretty generic rejection letters.

    When I applied all my advisors were like look here and there and we will give you good recs. You are gonna be a great candidate and get into great programs. Well obviously that did not turn out well. I didn't really decide to apply until the last two weeks so I was kinda scrabbling to get everything together. I figured that is probably the weakest point in my application. Uconn is my backup school. I have done the interview it went fine. I'm now just waiting to apply for some RA jobs and see what's the next step. 

    How are other international students applicant doing this round

    in Biology

    Posted

    I know it's always hard for international students to apply for life science programs because of the funding issues. I was rejected by most of the programs that I have applied (In retrospect, I should not have applied for all top programs, especially in the medical schools)MSK, Weil-Cornell, Rockefeller, Columbia Medical Campus, NYU Sackler Mount Sinai and Cold spring harbor and UCSF all said no. Only one interview offered from Uconn Health Center. Still waiting on more decisions but currently, do not have much hope. I did my undergrad in a top20 liberal arts college GPA 3.6/4.0 (I know it's not great. I finished in 3 years and one semester really screwed me up lol).  Research experience wise I have around two years, no publications but a thesis on the way. Currently in a master program at my own undergrad institution. Recommendations are all from my advisors and they know me really well. 

    I'm just wondering how are other international students doing in this round of applications? Maybe it's some flaws in my own applications (I finished 11 in 3 days. Didn't really decide to apply till the last minute. I'm not really confident in my Personal Statement but I did the best I could ). Would like to hear from other international students about how they are doing this year? I'm currently thinking about doing a lab tech/RA job somewhere 

     

     

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