Chances for Bioengineering/Biomed grad school

[jwang]

Hey, I've read what people have said how GPA / GRE factors in. If I have a 3.4 GPA from Bioeng berkeley and I want to be within range for top BIOE programs such as hopkins/ mit/upenn/ GA tech. What can I do to make up for it?

-By the end of my senior year I'll have 3 years (including summers & winter breaks) of research experience in the concentration I plan to apply to. But, should I divert a summer to applying to genentech? or an Amgen scholars program? If I got into a summer program at one of these schools would it help my chances/ be better than continuous undergrad research in my lab?

-How many publications (and impact factor) are expected if I'm in lab for 3 years?

-Should I take summer classes to improve my gpa? Would taking graduate courses in my area of interest be worth it?

-Should I be tutoring also or work on other extracurricular engineering projects? I've heard that comes up on the application

-I'm really open to any ideas & I appreciate any feedback

Thanks in advance

[ghanada]

you sound like you are in decent shape for gaining acceptance to top PhD program. However, this year is shaping up to be an incredibly difficult year so I have no idea how hard next year will be. You should definitely write some papers from the research work you were doing. You need to get going on that now if you want any chance on them being published by this year fall if you are going to apply for Fall 2013 admission. Being able to demonstrate successful research skills by publishing is a huge plus in your application. It also might not be a bad idea to increase your GPA with extra classes, especially more math/stats types of classes. Often times people are weary of whether a bme person will have strong enough math/technical skills for a PhD program. Hope that helps a little, here are my stats so you can get an idea of how hard this year's admissions are:

I did my undergrad in psychobio at UCLA with a 2.6 GPA (because I had no intention of doing grad school). I did about 1 year of research during undergrad, and then 3 years full-time research at UCLA after graduating. I have 2 first author published abstracts and poster presentations and about 10 other secondary authorships in peer reviewed journals. I currently have 3 first author papers under review. I then switched fields and obtained a Masters in Electrical Engineering with a 3.8 GPA from Boston University. I have 3 letters from well-known profs that I did my research with. My GRE scores are top 90% in all categories. I thought I would have a good chance at getting into some bme PhD programs but it has been tough. I have gained 1 acceptance at Boston University. I have gotten rejected from UCSD, UCB, UW, Stanford, UPenn, U Minnesota. I am still waiting on USC, Duke, UCLA, MIT, U Mich, Columbia, Northwestern, JHU, UPitts, Brown, CCNY. But I don't feel confident about getting into any of these schools. I will most likely take the BU acceptance.

So really my undergrad GPA is my weakest link, but I fully explained the situation in my personal statement and got a 3.8 GPA in grad school. This is still not good enough to get in. You might want to try and get your GPA up closer to 3.8 and publish a few papers if you want to get into a top 10 program. Best of luck to you.