blacklotus90

Finally done with the whole 2-month interview process, what a relief! Overall the interviews were a great experience and now I've got the most difficult choice of my life ahead of me. Congrats to everyone else who has also been through this entire ordeal! Anyone have any input on the choice between Caltech/UChicago/Yale? Updated stats are in my sig and my info can be found earlier in the thread in case it can help anyone applying to schools in the future.

Now that interview invites are pretty much all out, I figured I'd post my info in the hope that it will help others. I was so worried at the beginning of the application season and over-applied (14 schools in all >.<) and the interview results have been so far encouraging. I'm still pretty worried about the interviews themselves as I was a terrible interviewer for ugrad apps, but we'll see after the first one this Friday (Chicago). TGC has been incredibly helpful and reassuring in my grad school search so I'd like to wish a big thank you to the community! Undergrad Institution: Ivy Major(s): Computational Biology (Biosciences Track) GPA In Major: 3.38 at application but higher now Overall GPA: 3.36 at application but higher now Position in Class: no idea, gpas aren't calculated by the school Type of Student: domestic, male GRE Scores (old scoring format): Q: 800 (94%) V: 640 (92%) W: 4.5 (72%) Subject (Biology): 880 (97%) Research Experience: Researching since sophomore year of high school, work with microarrays, synthetic biology, and computational biology. Have been undergraduate project manager on my current project since freshman year of university. Publications incl. 1 3rd authorship, 2 manuscripts in preparation, and numerous abstracts/posters/presentations. Writing thesis on genetic network inference. Awards/Honors/Recognitions: various small scholarship/award type things but nothing big. Pertinent Activities or Jobs: ^mostly the research experience. Have also volunteered setting up a local free school organization and building computers for nonprofits. Any Miscellaneous Accomplishments that Might Help: I've taken a huge number of CS/bio classes at my school (at this point I think >20 classes in my major) and run a Comp bio club. My CV included a number of relevant class programming projects and both laboratory and programming skillsets. Special Bonus Points: Several of my LOR writers are pretty well known and I think they wrote me pretty complimentary letters, they have been excellent inspirations. Any Other Info That Shows Up On Your App and Might Matter: GPA was terrible freshman year but improved greatly after that point. (>3.6 discounting freshman year) Application results: see signature (will update in a few minutes)