ghanada

Here's some notification dates I got last year to hopefully help you guys out. Basically, you won't get rejection letters until pretty late. I think my app was borderline at all my schools so mine might have come especially late. I think it is fairly safe to assume that if you don't get an interview/acceptance by mid February, you will be getting rejected later on. I can also tell you that UMich has 2 interview weekends, one in Feb. and one in March. So if you haven't gotten invited yet, you might get an invite for March. Rejection notices: UPitt - NEVER RECEIVED!! what a bunch of jerks... CCNY 5/10 Duke 4/9 Brown 4/6 JHU 3/28 UCLA 3/15 Northwestern 2/27 MIT 2/16 UMinn 2/10 UW in Seattle 2/8 UCSD 2/8 Stanford 2/6 UPenn 2/2 Interview notices: Columbia 2/15, accepted 3/21 Acceptance notices (no interviews): BU 2/3

There is a facebook group, but it is currently only for past and current LEAP students. Honestly, if you do well in your calc requirements and get solid GRE scores, and if you have done any research or relevant industry work, you should have no problems with acceptance. LEAP has never been a particularly competitive program to get into, especially since there is just so little funding these days.

I completed the LEAP program last semester and I had an undergrad 2.6 GPA when I started. I wouldn't worry too much about GPA, more about conveying why you would be a good fit to the program. At the time I left BU there were very few rejections since they seem to be accepting more and more people but offering less financial aid.

Most schools work this way. I know UMich and Columbia (from your list) also do it that way too in case you weren't sure. You should ALWAYS tailor your app toward working with specific people/labs because ultimately that will be who funds you unless you have your own fellowship money coming in. Talking to POIs directly and getting them to agree to fund you is by far the best way of gaining acceptance to a university.

Wow, you have a stellar app (minus the GRE) AND being a female you really have a good advantage. I am at UMich Ann Arbor myself doing a PhD in BME and I think you should DEFINITELY apply. I can't speak about Caltech or Cornell, but I can tell you that UMich accepts PhD students in 1 of 2 ways. If you are a top applicant you will get selected for fellowships to pay for you and then you will come in with your choice of faculty advisors. More commonly, myself included, people come in knowing who they want to work with and your chosen advisor has agreed to fund you for X amount of years. The best way to go through this route is to communicate with these potential advisors. If you can find someone that has money and wants you, you will get accepted. That is how I did it. Start e-mailing POIs now and make connections. I didn't even get invited to interview but I found a good advisor that wanted me and in the 1st week of April I got a really late acceptance.

Yeah I don't think playing the odds of which dept to apply to is the best way to go about applications, especially if you are doing a PhD. Typically, you look for people that you want to work with and then apply to the department(s) these people are in since you need them to be on your thesis committee.

I had a 2.6 undergrad GPA and all my PhD acceptances last year were top 15 schools. One of them was Columbia (which I turned down). Keep in mind though that "ivy" status doesn't carry the same weight in a PhD as it does in undergrad or professional programs. Often time ivies aren't even that well ranked depending on the dept. Nobody will be impressed but your parents. Try and focus more on schools that are solid research fits, that is the most important factor, trust me. I would apply to any school that you think is a good fit, ivy or not. Try and not classify schools as a "reach" or "safety". If you goto a "reach" school just for the name but isn't a good fit, you will hate life. If you goto a "safety" you will feel like you were so close to getting in other places and could have done better so you will be disappointed going to that school. Both cases are bad scenarios. Instead, pick schools that are all great fits and whichever ones accept you, goto the best fit of them all.

Again, I think you need to focus on what types of jobs you want. Do grad school if the jobs you want require graduate degrees. If not, don't do it. Getting a Masters can easily cost you $50-100k if you go out of state and have to also afford living expenses. Do you want to spend that much money on a degree that might not even be helpful to what you want to do? There is also such a thing as being "over-qualified" for positions. This is why it is really important to know what types of degrees/skills you need for jobs. Don't just do grad school because you don't feel like looking for jobs. I still stand by my point that you should find schools that offer specialization areas in things you are interested in. Think about the people that are getting these industry jobs. If you were an employer, would you rather hire someone with a low GPA that took some general grad courses without any project/thesis/work experience, or take someone that took specific courses/labs and did a 1-2 semester project designing and applying skills directly applicable to what you do? You really need to spend some time looking at job postings. You are going to have a hard time finding industry jobs with no experience required, just a degree. Companies are VERY specific about what skills they are looking for and if all you do in your Master is take some math, chem, and bio courses, I doubt you will gain the relevant skills you need to get a good job.

agreed. BME as field is blowing up, but not necessarily jobs for BME graduates. The one huge surprising fact I learned while getting my Masters was that biomedical industry companies tend to not want biomedical engineers. They want mechanical, computer, electrical, and software engineers. I recommend all the undergrads I know to NOT do BME, but rather do a "classical" engineering discipline like the ones I mentioned and then specialize in BME for graduate work. That is precisely why I switched my Masters from BME to EE, but am now doing BME for my PhD. Anyways, regarding the original question, every school is different in terms of the Masters degree requirements. Generally, M.S. is historically the standard degree. Whether or not a thesis is required is up to the school. MEng is a much newer degree that is geared toward going to industry so no thesis is required, and instead you usually take some business/management courses. However, in my opinion, M.S. is still the standard and gives you options to do both industry or academia, while MEng really limits your ability to industry-only. I tend to recommend people go for the M.S. since you can always take business/management courses on your own. Plus doing a thesis/project is always desirable since it shows you did original, relevant and specialized skill work in something. I tend to think both academia and industry values that type of experience. M.E. also varies a lot and I tend to see this degree less.

haha I like how I've become the default low gpa person to talk to. Thanks for the referral. But yeah, like rjd150 said, your stats are going to make this an uphill battle. FIRST OF ALL, do YOU want to goto grad school? It is time to stop doing things your parents want you to do and start making decisions for yourself. If you don't have a need to goto grad school, then don't. Look for jobs. If you like research, look for an RA job at a university. Grad school will be expensive and time consuming so if you don't know why you are doing it, you probably shouldn't be doing it. I would suggest you start doing a job search and see if the jobs you want REQUIRE grad school. If you are set on doing grad school, particularly an MS, then I will warn you that you are most likely going to have to go out of state. Cali admissions are tough right now because of crappy economy so with your stats you will have a tough tie staying in Cali. Also, try not to think of it as "where can my stats get me into"? Start looking for schools that you are legitimately interested in and have faculty doing work you want to do. The point of doing grad school is to gain a strong specialization in an area beyond what was offered in undergrad. There is no point in just picking a random school and taking more classes. That won't help in any meaningful way in terms of job opportunities. You should be looking for programs that will give you a solid set of skills that you require and that will have connections to the jobs you want. Also, if you don't desire to do research or academia, consider looking for schools that offer an MEng. These degrees are focused on industry and tend to be easier to get into than MS, although that is not always the case.

Uhh UCLA is #2 in applied math on US News rankings. UCLA is a top tier school in pretty much every STEM field and like the previous commenter mentioned, it is top tier in the world, not just US. Not to mention the fact that the department includes Field Medal recipient Terence Tao.

yeah I completely agree. Harvard is a weird choice to throw in there, such a small BME dept and not well known at all. In fact, most people in the engineering field are surprised to hear Harvard even has a BME dept. I also tried really hard to find a reason to apply to Harvard for neuroengineering, but couldn't find ANYONE remotely related to the field. Even MIT is not particularly known for neuroengineering unless you are talking about optogenetics, but that doesn't really have to do with robotics/instrumentation. If you are really into neuroengineering with robotics and instrumentation, the schools that make the most sense are U Pitt, Brown, UMich, UW (unfortunate that Yoky Matsuoka isn't there anymore), Hopkins, Duke, Stanford, Berkeley, and Minnesota. You could also make an argument for UCSD, Georgia Tech, USC, UPenn, and Northwestern, but those schools have a much smaller number of faculty directly doing that type of work.

@Tempest36, you might want to look into University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. I'm there now doing neuroengineering work (neuroimaging and BCI). I can highly recommend the program and the research. There are literally dozens of labs doing work directly related to neural engineering. There are lots of labs doing work in all aspects like neural probes, utah arrays, brain-computer interface, EEG, fMRI, ECoG, bio-MEMS, biomaterials, bionanotechnology, rehabilitation engineering, neural prosthetics, etc. I know UMich isn't ranked quite as high as the schools you listed, but it is right up there. I have been very happy with the program and don't really have anything bad to say about UMich. The BME program is really strong, and continues to get better as they spend more money, open new facilities, and hire new faculty every year. Also, if you are into robotics and instrumentation, most the labs are highly collaborative and there are lots of cross-overs with the EE and MechE departments, which are also very well ranked. Definitely worth checking out.

don't worry about the chem prereq, that type of stuff is more of a guideline than a hard rule. In fact, I really don't think there are many (if any) hard rules that would get your application auto-rejected. They will definitely still review your app. Just think of it this way, if 1 admission spot came down to you and an identical applicant as yourself except that person HAD ochem, that person would get the acceptance. Other than that, the lack of ochem will just be considered in your overall app and weighed accordingly for each school. Good luck!

what?? what schools have already passed their deadline for next fall admissions? I think the earliest deadline I have seen might be Nov. 1st, but almost ALL deadlines are like Dec 1 or Jan 1. It might be different for international, but I can't imagine any schools already closed for accepting applications. Anyways, start your SOP now. It doesn't take a long time to write, it takes a long time to edit. You should get it edited by MANY people...advisors, colleagues, friends, whatever. It is never to early to start putting your app together. Some schools do admissions on a rolling basis so there might be some advantages to getting your app in earlier, but this varies a lot from school to school. I would just shoot to get your apps in a couple weeks earlier than the deadlines though since you want to make sure all your materials get in on time.

I think you all are missing the point. When it comes to BME, the background of the applicant is VERY flexible, one of the most flexible majors. But think of these as minimum requirements. The OP is asking about getting into a top 25 BME PhD program. I am currently attending a top 10 BME PhD program, did my MS at a top 10 BME program, and received 3 acceptances to top 25 BME PhD programs. I can tell you from personal experience, that even though schools list a SUGGESTED minimum requirements, they are not set in stone. BUT, from all the people I know that actually got acceptances, their backgrounds were MAGNITUDES times stronger than what the suggested minimums were on the admission websites. To get into a top 25 program, you need to be a standout applicant. So while you don't HAVE to necessarily have a engineering background, you will be competing with all-star applicants with such backgrounds and many with Masters in engineering. With that said, I think the OP is decently competitive, but not great. He/she will definitely struggle getting into a top 15 school, but might have a shot in the 15-25 range. The OP's GPA is on the low side, no core engineering courses, no LORs from people that can speak of OP's engineering skills, no engineering research, or no engineering experience. That is a tough sell. I would recommend like 12-16 apps. I would say like half to top 25 schools and half outside. However, I would not apply to a PhD program in a school you view as a "safety". To get through a PhD you need to be passionate about what you are doing. If you get into a school that you aren't excited about and is not a great fit, you should not go. There are plenty of schools in the 25-50 range that are doing great work. Find schools in this range that excite you and apply to them because you really want to go there.

juilletmercredi is DEAD ON. You might not want to do a PhD in BME if all you care about is ivy league name. Do some searching on these boards and you will find plenty of harsh words towards doing a research-based PhD at a school just for brand name. You actually have a VERY strong app, which is weird because most people with credentials like that shoot for strong BME schools, not name brand schools. Of the schools you mentioned, the only ones that seem worth applying to for you would be MIT, UPenn, and Columbia. Harvard barely has a bioeng. program and is not well known at all (a lot of people don't even realize they have a bioeng program). Cornell and Yale are respectable, but not top tier by any means. All the schools juilletmercredi mentioned are absolutely correct. I would also add Stanford to that list. Those are all known to be TOP BME schools among the BME community. I am personally at UMich for my BME PhD, and I can tell you that it is definitely an incredible program. From your list, I got into Columbia as well, but I didn't find their program to be as strong. Your Verbal GRE score is fine, I wouldn't worry about it. I would, however, work to get your Quant score up. Definitely over 90%. And yeah you don't need to take any courses, just practice on your own some more since you are probably only like 2 questions away from achieving that. If you are truly serious about getting a solid PhD, forget about brand name right now. Go through the list of top 20 BME schools, find people that are doing work that interests you and focus on research fit. Do that, and I am fairly certain you should have no problem getting into at least 1 top program.

You should read all the "low gpa" threads on here, there are a number of them floating around and share many experience from people that got into good grad schools. From my own personal experience in a similar field (biomedical engineering), I can tell you there is hope. But it means stop worrying and feeling sorry for yourself, pick yourself up, and make things happen. It is NOT easy by any means, but you can do it. I had a 2.6 GPA from undergrad at UCLA. I am now doing my PhD in BME at University of Michigan (top 10 school) and was also accepted for a PhD at Columbia (which is where you are shooting for) all with full funding and generous stipend offers. From the route I went, I personally believe there are 2 main components you will need to spend some time working on. Research and GPA. For research, I spent 5 years (2 during undergrad, 3 years full time after graduation) working as an RA in a lab in my field. I started from the bottom doing grunt work, but eventually became the lab manager and got 2 first author publications + about 10 secondary authorships. This set me up to get into a Masters program at BU. I did 2 years of coursework, got my GPA up to 3.8 and did research in my thesis lab for 1 year full time. So with that, I have a good graduate GPA, many years of research, many publications, strong LORs, and an MS degree under my belt. In my opinion, those are all the types of things that will help you get into a top tier PhD program. Now, you must understand the reality of it all. This took me 6 years since I finished undergrad to get to my PhD program. So yes, it will take you some time to recover from your undergrad GPA. I am also in a sizable amount of debt from having to do an unfunded Masters. Although luckily I managed to get a generous scholarship, but at an expensive school, so my debt isn't as bad as it could have been. However, I am now in a dream grad program doing research that excites me, and because of my previous Masters and research experience, I am on track to finish this PhD in just 4 years. As for advice, I would think the best route for you is to try and get into a Masters program (most likely unfunded), do EXCEPTIONALLY well in coursework, spend A LOT OF TIME doing research for a strong thesis doing work that would be relevant to your desired PhD, get 2 LORs from professors in grad courses you do well in, and 1 LOR from your thesis advisor. If you can't gain acceptance to a good Masters program this year, than in the mean-time find an RA job doing research in your field and re-apply in another year or 2. And really, the IDEAL route would be to try and gain admission to a Masters program in a school that you would want to continue to do your PhD at. In this case, you would probably start as an unfunded Masters student, do 1-2 years of coursework, start volunteering as a grad researcher in a well funded lab, demonstrate to your PI that you are good and desirable, then get that PI to offer to fund you for a PhD. You will most likely still have to re-apply to this same school for the PhD, but with a faculty member that has money for you, wants you, and writes a LOR to vouch for you, gaining admission to said school will be more or less automatic. Bottom line: If you are driven and passionate about attaining our goals, I fully believe you can do it. It is difficult and will require a bit of luck and connections, but it can happen. It might take a few years to get there, but it is worth it.

Yeah, unfunded Masters programs are MUCH easier to get into than PhD. However, funded Masters are probably just as tough as PhD. They are very rare and you have to be a very standout applicant.

I understand that UC's are on quarter system, I went to UCLA myself. But regardless, you are engaged and living on the east coast. If you haven't made any plans yet for moving across the country within 1 month of classes starting, it just seems crazy to me. With it being soooo late now, it probably does make sense to re-apply next year even if you don't get in to better schools. I really think re-applying is a complete gamble and is incredibly risky and overall ridiculously painful for having to go through the entire application process again, but it really doesn't sound like you want to go where you got in so you would probably never be happy. If you do re-apply, you should update your posts to see if that extra year made any difference.

I got rejected from CCNY on May 10th. I turned my app in around December. I got no feedback at all from them at all and actually just assumed they weren't even taking applications seriously. I never hear anyone talk about that school and whenever I mentioned it nobody even knew that school had a BME program. I am kind of confused as to how it ranks so highly on PhDs.org. You should apply, but honestly I wouldn't necessarily count on them unless you can talk to a POI personally. I don't think anyone else in this forum even applied there.

this can't be real. There is no way you are still deciding in mid-August. Some schools have already started!

2012: 2011: There is one for every engineering discipline every year. Go through the pages, many people POST their profiles inside these threads. Also, in the 'Results' section many people list their GPA/GRE. You will see a red diamond in their result post if they listed their scores.

I never attended Columbia as a student, but went through the admission process, interviews, etc. and gained acceptance. If anyone wants to know more about Columbia's admission process, feel free to message me.

I fall into the second category you mentioned. I had a low undergrad gpa, high Masters gpa, with a thesis and a few publications. Assuming your GRE scores are top 90% or so, with your GPA and publications, I would think you should have a good shot at top 25 schools. Top 10 is another story, and will be a toss up every time. But I would definitely think you can grab at least a handful of acceptances in the top 15-25 range. Your math background is pretty standard for undergrads so I don't think you will be deficient or anything. However, you will be competing against Masters level people that have several courses in grad level DSP courses. Also, keep in mind that LORs are pretty important and having strong letters from people that are well known can also help. The best advice is to just apply to lots of places and in a large range. Apply to plenty of schools in the top 25 but you should also apply to some others ranked lower. Just make sure they are programs you would truly want to goto and don't think of them as safety schools.