Very unusual applicant profile advice

[deep_lazy]

I have written a similar post two years ago and repeating the same question after some changes since then.

I'm attending a med school at a top institution at S. Korea and double majored mathematics. Note that med school in my country is an undergrad course (as long as i'm correct) as in the U.K. or India. I have a decent grade in mathematics (3.9 in 4.0 scale) with a lot of advanced courses including graduate courses and mostly got A+ in analysis courses (elementary analysis, measure theory, measure theoretic stochastic calculus etc.). One good news is that the research projects that I've been working on aged well and looking forward for publication in decent biostat/bioinfo/genetics journals of IF>8. 

What I'm worried about is my medicine grades. After two years of attending med school, my grades ended up around 3.0/4.0. This translates to about top 50~70% quantile in the department. One excuse is that the department has a very strict grading policy. I expect very subtle improvements in the following two years since junior/senior years are known to be little bit more generous than basic science courses in the first two years of med school.

So in short, I have a very polarized grades in two majors (medicine and math) with the medicine grades that are quite aweful for application to top biostatsitics phd programs.

Will the poor grades in med play a significant role in grad school application? 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by deep_lazy

[AC1]

Hi,

I am not an expert in graduate school admission process, but I do not think that your background in medicine and low grades should matter that much. You need to be more specific about the math courses that you have taken. For example if you have taken or plan to take advanced analysis and proof based linear algebra courses or not and how you have or how you fare. Also courses like mathematical statistics, inference etc on your transcript would be looked at during the admission process.

I would say that you could really use your unusual background in medicine and your interest in biostats to build a strong SOP. Also you would need to sit for your GRE and TOEFL and have decent scores in them. Publication in a decent peer reviewed journal is definitely a plus and also how strong your recommendation letters are and are from whom. With all this being said, I understand that your application will not depend solely on your GPA but the entire package of GPA, GRE, TOEFL, SOP, Recommendation letters, Research experience and most importantly how much aligned you are to the research interests of the faculty members of the department you are applying to.