Post Bac Courses

[Rapton]

Hello,

I have a question. I was initially denied admission this past year into graduate school. I was however accepted into Harvards graduate school for one year as a special student. During this time I am allowed to take course work in the area in which I applied (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology). My intention is during this time period to take graduate courses as if I had entered the first year of graduate school in order to strengthen my application. I graduated with a 3.38 GPA in biology with a minor in chemistry, with a 630 Verbal, 4.5 Analytical, and a 550 Quan (I am retaking the GRE). My question is, Harvard is an expensive school to do a year of coursework without funding, would demonstrating success in graduate coursework from a name university substantially strengthen my graduate application enough to justify the cost? I am applying for phd programs in ecology.

Thank you for our itme and energy.

[emmm]

It would certainly strengthen your application if you were able to work with someone known, make a very good impression, and get a great LOR. I don't know if this special program will give you that opportunity or not, but it might give you access. If you are able to make some good contacts, it might even be worth staying to do research with them for a while (if that is an area where you need to strengthen your application). Doing well in graduate courses is not necessarily easy, so taking a full set of grad classes could be something of a gamble, especially if you are not also making helpful personal contacts.

[S.Y.]

I think sometimes, if you do excellent work they will also give you special admission. If I were you, I'm just going to take that opportunity. Even if it's expensive, you'll always have that on your CV.

[dazedandbemused]

I'm going to be starting a post-bac in the fall, but I personally never would have done it without funding. Unless you feel confident that you will be able to make great connections and that it will truly add to your CV I wouldn't do it. I say that because you could end up doing all of that work only to walk away with a couple of new classes and not much else to show for it. Would the professors in the program be willing to write you new LORs? How involved would they be in helping you to move on to the next stage of graduate work? The real question is whether the good outweighs the bad; in my program, for instance, even if I don't get straight into a PhD I have a named fellowship to put on my CV and I've been paid to sit around taking awesome classes. What exactly is the school gaining by giving you this opportunity, and what do you get out of it in return?