greengenes25to4

I work at Hopkins right now and I can tell you that the grad students here are happy with the education they are getting, despite the lack of aesthetics in Baltimore. Hopkins practically owns the north east end of the city and its like a scientific fortress. I never feel unsafe, even though I typically work until very late and am outside at night. There are bars very close and happy hours several times a week where you can meet other students from other grad programs, even outside of basic science, like public health and medicine. It's very international here, too. Hopkins is a reason scientists from all over the country and the world are visit, take jobs and start lives in Baltimore.

I think "fosgfp" is officially running this thread. Smart cookie. I just was invited for an interview with Johns Hopkins Cellular and Molecular Medicine :-D

if you're published you have nothing to worry about

"For schools, ask yourself "If this were the only school that accepted me, would I be ok studying there?"" is the perfect question to ask and I can confidentially say yes to every one of those schools on my list. Thank you for the replies BassAZ and Krypton. I'm looking forward to being on the other side of these applications.

Thanks for the advice, Liomographia. At smaller schools, you have a lot of room to ask stupid questions, but still be recognized for making good insights to make up for it. There are simply more opportunities for interaction. I've noticed, from the large institution I am at now, that faculty do keep their distance and are less likely to open windows into their personality. The question is what is best for a graduate education. In research, there is much wisdom in how to plan and budget a project. Time and money management isn't in the appendix of your biology textbook. Finding a good mentor is going to be important.

whoops, pulled a rick perry... let me finish my sentence: Let me know what you think and, for anyone on the other side of this mess, is the transition from small school to big school a difficult one? I actually love the institution I am at right now for the quality of the research, but I have noticed a more defined distance between faculty and their students.

Alright, so I am entirely down for making genetics my life's work. I've known this for awhile now and am finally getting around to applying to PhD programs in the subject. However, the thing that has persistently stood in the way of my seeking a PhD has been a personal fear of big-name schools. Names like Yale, Harvard and Berkeley are always met with great admiration and, at least during my undergrad application process, were nearly untouchable. I received my BS in MolBio from a small, lesser known liberal arts university a year ago. I did pretty well for myself and was excepted as a bright student in the bio department. I've been told to apply to some of the top-ranked umbrella and genetics PhD programs by advisers, but I really am not sure how I stand in comparison to the rest of the application pool. Is my ratio of "reach" to "safe" schools skewed too far to the left based on my credentials? Here are my barebone stats: GPA: 3.7/4 740 Quant, 560 Verb 2 years undergrad research with 2 small grants awarded and one paper accepted 1 year post-bacc research (current position) at top-ranked institution, one presentation at national meeting and 2 submitted papers 1 letter from current PI, 3 letters from BS institution including department chair The following is my current application list, in order of USNews ranking (Note: this is far from my sole basis for applying. I have made spreadsheets, box plots and elaborate ranking systems for narrowing down my application list. Clearly, I'm over-thinking it.) Harvard Systems Bio UCBerkeley* JHU BCMB* Yale BBS* Scripps* UCSF Tetrad Washington University* University of Chicago UCSD Biology* Rockefeller University of Pennsylvania* A star indicates that I am definitely applying to the school. I am going to apply to a handful of the non-starred schools, but don't have enough money to apply to them all. UMaryland and BostonU have fine programs that I might apply to for safety purposes, but I'm not as excited about them. Let me know what you think and, for anyone on the other side of this mess, is the transition from small school to big school a