Hey everyone,
Just hopping on to say you guys have been a huge moral support in this whole process. I was offered an interview at UC Berkeley-UCSF. I'm gonna post my stats here just so everyone keeps up hope. I genuinely thought I had no shot anywhere.
Undergrad Institution (approx. rank/reputation in STEM): One of the senior CUNYs thats not CCNY
Major(s): Biochemistry and Applied Mathematics Minor(s): Statistics GPA in Major: 3.65 Overall GPA: 3.686/4.0 Demographics/Background: South Asian
GRE Scores: 160 Verbal/ 163 Quant/ 5 AW LOR: Strong. 1 from PI who was head of Chem department, another at a major research hospital, another from a CCNY professor, and the last from an international collaborator who is well known. I published with all of them
Research Experience: 5 years. Bio laboratory in high school, organic chemistry synthesis lab for 3 years, 1 summer REU in a physics lab, 2.5 years in the research hospital (overlapped with the organic synth lab because of a collab)
Publications/Abstracts/Presentations: 3 papers published, 2 3rd author and 1 2nd author. All ACS journals (not JACS). 1 paper submitted, 5th author. Did a couple of crap posters at my school
Awards/Honors/Recognitions: Outstanding student leader, an ACS award (basically bs), 4-5 internal university fellowships and scholarships
Fellowships/Funding: Applied for GRFP.
Pertinent Activities or Jobs: Volunteered with refugees abroad for 2 summers, working as a quant day job while continuing to do research at night
Other Miscellaneous Accomplishments: Class president and president of a minority club (not minority in stem though LOL)
Anything else in your application that might matter (faculty connections, etc.): I was originally applying for med school, so I submitted an MCAT score. I did reasonably well (93 percentile).
Research Interests: nanotech, photonics, therapy and diagnostics
Institutions/Programs:
Northwestern - Chemistry
Weill Cornell - Pharmacology (Offered Interview)
Columbia - ChemE
MIT - BioE
UC Berkeley-UCSF - BioE (Offered Interview)
Penn - BioE
Stanford - BioE
Harvard - BioE
Comments: For the most part, my stats are incredibly unremarkable. I am well below the average in terms of GPA and GRE, I didn't major in engineering, I went to a mediocre college, and I am an over represented minority in STEM. I applied to programs I had sincere interest in and wrote a sincere and honest personal statement about my goals, where I also alluded to the fact that I flourish outside the classroom. I was offered interviews at Weill Cornell and Berkeley, and I was invited to a reimbursed Penn open house back in October, where a grad student informed us they only invited the top applicants.
The point is, don't give up. Your performance in school and the GRE is not going to hurt you as much as you think, as long as you have demonstrated that you truly want this. If you feel your ECs don't support this, reach out to people, PIs. Let them know who you are and where you want to be. Nothing is set in stone until the semester actually begins.
I wish everyone here the best of luck.