My neuroscience programs. Let me show you them.

[acetylcholine]

I'm paranoid about my credentials.  If you could give me your assessment, that might help me narrow down my huge list of neuroscience PhD programs.

 

School: Mid-sized state school.  Not a U. of State or a State State.  Top 200 according to the old ARWU, but not a top 100 (however, ranked somewhere between 68 and 85 in the United States).  I applied there in part so I could commute.

Major: Biology (departmental honors)

GPA: 3.6

GREs: (practice scores, scaled with a previous year's score guide) 162 Q, 162 V, predicting a 5+ on A

LoRs: excellent

Research: 2 summers, Smithsonian and MBL

 

Programs:

 

U. of Chicago

MIT

Baylor College of Medicine

U. of Arizona

SUNY Buffalo

Brown/NIH

Brandeis

UCSD

Harvard

WUSTL

U. of Miami

USC

NYU-CNS

Oregon Health Sciences University

Columbia

Oregon

Texas A&M

 

Clearly this is way too many programs to apply to.

[BeakerBreaker]

It's hard to say, really. Your GRE (practice) is really solid, GPA is good.

 

But what makes or breaks your application will likely be your LoRs and research experience.  As long as you did something meaningful and didn't wash glassware for two summers, you should be fine on that front.  You'll need a convincing SoP.  You'll want LoRs that will praise your ability to do research.

 

Based off of what you've written, I'd say the range of schools you chose is good.  Never undersell yourself.  If you like Harvard, WUSTL, whatever, you absolutely should apply for it and should not worry about your credentials.  There is no such thing as a safety school.  That's my second piece of advice; I got into some good programs and rejected from some worse 'ranked' programs.

 

There really isn't such a thing as 'too many schools.' That's up for you to decide: do you want to spend the time and money?  If so, then go for it.  If you truly think you'd enjoy 20+ programs and don't mind spending the money, apply to 20+.  Just do your research ahead of time to make sure you really like what those programs to offer.  No one is going to be able to tell you which of those schools will appeal to you the most.

 

Good luck -- I'm more of a biochem/MCB kind of person, but perhaps someone who is into the whole neuro thing can give you better advice about those programs.

[acetylcholine]

One of the things that I'm really paranoid about is how much the fact that I don't go to a Top 20 university will factor into my admissions.

[LMac]

Also, pay attention to which schools have labs doing research that interests you. I'll be attending a program that my stats would suggest I couldn't get in to, but the research fit was perfect. In my SOP and in my interview I could enthusiastically explain why I should be at that school. I also found a POI who acted as my advocate during admissions because I was a great fit for her lab.

 

If you keep your stats at a level to carry your application through initial screenings, your ability to explain what you want to study and why you want to study it at that school wil be the thing that takes you the rest of the way.

[ion_exchanger]

I was also accepted to schools that my stats would suggest that I couldn't get into. I was accepted because of the fit. I definitely did not attend a top 20 university, in fact most people at my Penn interview had never heard of my university and were pronouncing the name incorrectly, lol. I agree with LMac, my SOP and interview showed that I was a good fit and why I wanted to attend my particular schools.

[biotechie]

Your grades/scores are better than mine, and I've been accepted to Baylor College of Medicine and another school. I was also waitlisted at UCSD, but they called me for an interview recently (which I turned down). Ion_Exchanger is right. Research fit mattered more. I have 6 years of research experience, and that mattered more than my other things. My school is fairly unknown in the biochem/cell bio circles, but I have some cool and strong research under my belt. It showed them that I can do science, regardless of how well I do on a test or in uninteresting classes like neurophysiology ( ).

 

I applied to 6 programs. Three I was in love with, and three that I liked. I got interviews at 4 of them, but turned down two. If you find research that you really like at a few programs you think you have a chance at, you may not need to apply to 20 programs. Do lots of research.

 

Also make sure your Letters of Rec, Personal Statement, and Research Statements are as strong as you can make them. Use your personal statement to show how passionate you are. Draw the admissions people in. Make yourself unforgettable. Your letters should help re-emphasise that and should match up with your research statement.

Side note: I know Baylor doesn't accept many students into the Neuroscience program. Lots of them end up in the CMB program, too!

Edited March 26, 2013 by biotechie

[acetylcholine]

Research is actually, largely, the only factor I used in building my list of schools.

 

I'm thankfully not concerned as much about convincing programs that I'm a good fit for them because of this.

 

biotechie, is the fact that I only did two summers of research that don't TOTALLY dovetail with my research interests going to bite me in the ass?

[biotechie]

Research is actually, largely, the only factor I used in building my list of schools.

 

I'm thankfully not concerned as much about convincing programs that I'm a good fit for them because of this.

 

biotechie, is the fact that I only did two summers of research that don't TOTALLY dovetail with my research interests going to bite me in the ass?

 

Not as long as you can show that you learned something beneficial and can handle yourself in the laboratory. Being in the lab and learning how to do protocols is important. Having that experience before you get into grad school is essential in my opinion. Now, if your research was in Geology and you were working with rocks, that might not help you so much in neuroscience. But if you did research in Microbiology where you ran western blots and you're getting into a cell bio and neuro lab, that's going to help you a ton. Just make sure you can talk about and answer questions on those projects that you did, and have an idea of what your interests are. I think you'd be fine as long as you can properly express it and show that you get it.

[ion_exchanger]

biotechie, is the fact that I only did two summers of research that don't TOTALLY dovetail with my research interests going to bite me in the ass?

 

As someone who has had to train people new to research, any research experience is better than no research experience. No matter where you go, there will be something new to you that you haven't done before. The key is to be a good learner. Labs like that you know how to use a pipette, they like that you can make solutions, that you can run an sds gel, that you can take a set of directions and follow them to produce. I asked one trainee to make a 1M solution of something. They miscalculated and made 2M. Instead of just diluting it, they threw the entire thing away and started over. There are simple things that having any type of research experience can teach.

[Neuro_Dave]

One of the most important things that I could tell BY FAR, during my interviews was my ability to write.  Lab directors/advisers want to know that you have the writing skills to succeed at drafting research grants and publishing the work you do in their labs.  That is typically where a good deal of the funding comes from for the research.   Having 2 pubs under my belt helped a TON. 

 

But other members of my undergrad lab who are going through the same process with no pubs are pulling up the Summer Research awards they won which included writing a grant like proposal and manuscript, as well as the in class assignments we had with our lab director that included a mock research grant draft based on the style that would be used in an NSF NIH or CMH grant application.  They have had great success getting into programs even with mediocre GRE scores and average GPA.  If you can write, your research interests line up with faculty that are accepting students, and something in your SoP catches the interest of anybody sifting through the dozens of apps, you're golden.