Choosing to apply or not to apply to top schools

[budgie]

One of my strong letter writers is only willing to send out six letter on my behalf and thus, I must only apply to 6 schools. These are my stats:

Undergrad Institution: UCSD (top bioE program)

Major(s): BioE

GPA in Major: 3.90

Overall GPA: 3.90

Position in Class:top 5%

Type of Student:American female

GRE Scores: Q 159 (77%) V 158 (77%) W 4.5 (74%)

Research Experience: 2 months biosensor lab, 6 months cell culture, and 6 months cellular biosensor senior design project

Pertinent Activities or Jobs:leadership in BMES, leadership in TBP, constructing electrophoresis box for HIV detection in Africa with EWH, VP Physics and Engineering Club at CC.

Miscellaneous: Studied at Cambridge University over the summer, I have an awesome story to tell in my SOP about how I went from being an English major at CC to pursuing a PhD in bioE after at life changing event.

With my lackluster GRE scores, I feel that I should probably apply to 3 'dream' schools and 3 'backup' schools. [And yes, these are my scores after studying for months and retaking the GRE. My first scores were 158, 157, 4.0 and it totally sucked to only see my scores only go up one point after all the work I did. It seems I just get really anxious on standardized tests. Boo.]

Currently, I'm having a hard time deciding if it's even worth applying to some of my dream schools (Caltech, Cornell, Ann Arbor). For example, I called Caltech and ensured that they don't have a GRE cutoff, but it's hard for me to convince myself that I have a chance without 90th% or greater in quantitative. What do you all think? How do you decide whether it's worth applying or not? Should I apply to the next school(s) on my list instead?

[sing something]

Could you apply to your top 9 and have find a different letter writer for your bottom three schools?

[ghanada]

Wow, you have a stellar app (minus the GRE) AND being a female you really have a good advantage. I am at UMich Ann Arbor myself doing a PhD in BME and I think you should DEFINITELY apply. I can't speak about Caltech or Cornell, but I can tell you that UMich accepts PhD students in 1 of 2 ways. If you are a top applicant you will get selected for fellowships to pay for you and then you will come in with your choice of faculty advisors. More commonly, myself included, people come in knowing who they want to work with and your chosen advisor has agreed to fund you for X amount of years. The best way to go through this route is to communicate with these potential advisors. If you can find someone that has money and wants you, you will get accepted. That is how I did it. Start e-mailing POIs now and make connections. I didn't even get invited to interview but I found a good advisor that wanted me and in the 1st week of April I got a really late acceptance.

[intirb]

I don't really think there's such a thing as a safety school for graduate school. Do you have a research topic you're passionate about? Then you already know which labs are involved in that topic, so you know which schools to apply to. If there are more than six labs for your area of interest, I would pick based on fit.

Your stats are good (don't worry about the GRE!). So you'll probably be more likely to get rejected from a "safety" school without a good research fit than a competitive school with a great research fit.

[budgie]

Thanks for the advice everyone! The schools I named are excellent research fits for me, so I'm moving forward with applications and I'm gonna start emailing potential PI's as ghanada recommended. I'm glad the internet exists, y'all make me feel better =]