Safety and match schools for molecular biology PhD

[nevg]

Hey all,

I will be applying to grad school next year and I am trying to narrow down my choices. I have an overall 3.6 GPA from a top 5 school in the US and a 3.7 GPA in my biology major. By the time I apply to grad school I will have over 3 and a half years of research experience in a single lab, but I am unsure if I will be published by then. Also, I still have to take the GRE.

My top choices include: Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, MIT, Harvard, Scripps, UC San Diego, Rockefeller, Cornell, and Duke. My more realistic choices are UCLA and Chapel Hill, while my safeties are Tufts and Boston University.

I am not sure if UCLA is really a realistic choice, though. Can anyone recommend some schools with strong molecular or cell biology programs that I am likely to get into? I would prefer for them to be either in the west or east coasts and to be close to other research institutions.

I would greatly appreciate it

[Faraday]

At the end of the day there really is no such thing as a "safety" school. Just look at the results page and you can see that there are plenty of examples of people with fantastic "stats" who get accepted to top tier schools and then rejected from schools they thought they would have no problem with... At the end of the day there is not way to say for certain how your application will do, we can't looks at what you have told us and poperly evaluate your research experience and LORs as the admissions committees will so we can only guess. Your advisor probably has a more appropriate answer because he/she knows your experience and knonws presumably how strong at least one of your LORs will be...

Edited April 27, 2012 by Faraday

[BassAZ]

Stop for a second, look at the schools that you have listed as your "top" and visit their websites. Take note of people that do research in the area that you're interested in. See, the thing is (and I'm sure if you haven't already heard this, you will hear it a lot) the pedigree of the program only matters so much. A lot of this stuff is going to come from who your PI ends up being and/or whether you have a few choices of who your PI is at your chosen school. There might be one guy at Stanford who is just PERFECT for you but maybe he's not taking students for the next three years and no one else is really working in your desired topic. If you end up at Stanford in this situation, your quality of life might drastically drop.

And this is not a knock on you - this forum is filled with brilliant people that just need to be reassured - but you'd be a fool to think that with a 3.6 from a top program you wouldn't be competitive. Do decently on the GRE and places will give you a look, don't worry.

So, in short, it's great that you've looked at the programs in general, but unless there is someone that you know you want to work with at Tufts or BU, don't apply there because there aren't any safety schools. Apply to schools with people and specific areas of research you want to work in/with. With what you've written here, you're going to be looked at by practically any school you've listed.

The only schools you should apply to are the schools where you know you'd be happy to get in and wouldn't hesitate to agree to attend. (This might actually be what you mean and you've just listed them in terms of your preference, and that's fine: if that's so, please stop listing things as "safety schools" etc. because it gives a bad connotation to both the program and your desire to do research there).

[nevg]

BassAZ, you are completely right in all your statements. Tufts and BU have excellent programs but I realize there is a greater possibility of getting into those programs than say into Harvard or Stanford. I didn't mean to devaluate a program's prestige by calling it a safety school, I think my terminology got stuck from when I was applying to college. By safety I mean a program that I would be very likely to get into, although I know there is never an absolute guarantee. My fear is that I am aiming to high and will be rejected from all the programs I want to apply to; I know it happens sometimes. I need to know what programs would even consider as a competitive applicant and that is what I really what I am calling a "safety" and "match" school.

Thanks for your input!

[Dapi]

If your doing good research in a good lab, that is what is important. Otherwise, LORs carry a ton of weight, so does research experience, and a strong personal statement. If you can get published that will help you greatly. If you can wait to start grad school until you are published, you can go anywhere you listed - and without a publication, you likely will still end up where you listed if you have truly done research for 3.5 years full time. I was accepted to schools you listed, so feel free to PM me if you want to talk more about programs in mol bio.